Sir William Garrow was born in Middlesex, England in 1760. He entered the legal profession and became the dominant figure at Old Bailey - London's Central Criminal Court - from 1783 to 1793. Later on, he was a Member of Parliament, a Solicitor-General, an Attorney-General, and, finally, a judge and a lawmaker within the English Common Law Tradition. Aside from BBC1 TV's prime-time drama series Garrow's Law, the story of Sir William Garrow's unique contribution to the development of English law and Parliamentary affairs is little known by the general public. This book tells the real story of the man behind the drama. Garrow dared to challenge the entrenched legal ways and means. His 'gifts to the world' include altering the relationship between judge and jury (the former had until then dominated over the latter in criminal trials), helping to forge the presumption of innocence, rules of evidence, and ensuring a general right to put forward a defense using a trained lawyer. He gave new m

Sir William Garrow: His Life, Times and Fight for Justice Paperback - 17 January 2011 by John Hostettler and Richard Braby. With a Foreword by Geoffrey Robertson QC. In stock. Usually despatched within 24 hours Price: £22.95FREE Delivery in the UK Ebook versions also available - How will I read it? Buy: Kindle | Apple Books | Google Play (external links) Plus other sellers - search the web by format: EPUB | PDF (Click for a free online preview of this book) Paperback | ISBN 9781904380696 | Published 17 January 2011 | 352 pages | Edition New Format | Publisher Waterside Press Book description A comprehensive account of lawyer William Garrow’s life, career, family and connections. Sir William Garrow was born in Middlesex in 1760 and called to the Bar in 1783. He was the dominant figure at the Old Bailey from 1783 to 1793, later becoming an MP, Solicitor-General, Attorney-General and finally a judge and lawmaker within the Common Law Tradition. Sir William Garrow is a generous work in which well-known legal historian and biographer John Hostettler and family story-teller Richard Braby (a descendant of Garrow) combine their skills and experience to produce a gem of a book. ‘Without the pioneering work of William Garrow, the legal system would be stuck in the Middle Ages’: Radio Times ‘Right – hands up all those who have heard of William Garrow. Hmm, thought so – me neither. That will all change ….’ Frances Gibb's Law Section, The Times Aside from BBC1 TV’s prime-time drama series ‘Garrow’s Law’, the story of Sir William Garrow’s unique contribution to the development of English law and Parliamentary affairs is so far little known by the general public. This book tells the real story of the man behind the drama. Garrow is now in the public-eye for daring to challenge entrenched legal ways and means. His ‘gifts to the world’ include altering the relationship between judge and jury (the former had until then dominated over the latter in criminal trials), helping to forge the presumption of innocence and ensuring a general right to put forward a defence using a trained lawyer. He gave new meaning to the forensic art of cross-examination, later diverting skills honed as a radical to help the Crown when it was faced with plots, treason and revolution.The lost story of Sir William Garrow and its rediscovery will prove intriguing for professional and general readers alike and will be an invaluable ‘missing-link’ for legal and social historians. It is also a remarkable work of genealogical research which will register strongly with family historians.

Sir William Garrow was born in Middlesex, England in 1760. He entered the legal profession and became the dominant figure at Old Bailey - London's Central Criminal Court - from 1783 to 1793. Later on, he was a Member of Parliament, a Solicitor-General, an Attorney-General, and, finally, a judge and a lawmaker within the English Common Law Tradition. Aside from BBC1 TV's prime-time drama series Garrow's Law, the story of Sir William Garrow's unique contribution to the development of English law and Parliamentary affairs is little known by the general public. This book tells the real story of the man behind the drama. Garrow dared to challenge the entrenched legal ways and means. His 'gifts to the world' include altering the relationship between judge and jury (the former had until then dominated over the latter in criminal trials), helping to forge the presumption of innocence, rules of evidence, and ensuring a general right to put forward a defense using a trained lawyer. He gave new m

This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

For any of the five million people who saw the prime-time BBC series "Garrow's Law" this is an absorbing book. It is written by expert commentator John Hostettler who has studied Garrow extensively. The book uses the true facts on which the programme was based to compare drama and reality. Part I looks at the world in which the real life Garrow worked, marking out the main aspects of crime and punishment, which at the time operated primarily to deal with a troublesome but deprived and under-privileged strata of society: these unfortunates fed the conveyor belt to the courts, prisons and gallows. It was a world of few rights, effortless conviction, ready condemnation, draconian punishments and utter prejudice. This is the backdrop against which TV audiences were, in 2009, introduced to the story of the feisty individual who set out to change matters. Judicial order, procedural chaos and impudence in the face of authority fired the imagination of viewers as Garrow sought ever more ingenious ways of avoiding legal rules, such as those which prevented him from speaking directly to the jury, visiting a client in prison, or knowing the evidence in advance. Part II takes the reader through the cases portrayed in the TV series explaining their true origins and the jig-saw of facts, roles or events with which the scriptwriters wrestled in the interests of dramatic impact. The book compares the ‘factional’ drama with what actually happened at the time. He also explains how, in reality, the law had its own fictions - such as "pious perjury" - to prevent accused people from being completely subjugated by the legal system. "Garrow's Law" is a minor masterpiece in which the author brings his immense knowledge of his subject to bear in a highly readable and entertaining work that will be of interest to lawyers and general public alike.

This book maps the changes in court advocacy in England and Wales over the last three centuries. Advocacy, the means by which a barrister puts their client’s case to the court and jury, has grown piecemeal and at an uneven pace; the result of a complex interplay of many influences. Andrew Watson examines the numerous principal factors, from the effect on juniors of successful styles deployed by senior advocates, changes in court procedure, reforms in laws determining who and what may be put before courts, the amount of media reporting of court cases, and public and press opinion about the acceptable limits of advocates’ tactics and oratory. This book also explores the extent to which juries are used in trials and the social origins of those serving on them. It goes on to examine the formal teaching of advocacy which was only introduced comparatively recently, arguing that this, and new technology, will likely exert a strong influence on future forensic oratory. Speaking in Court provides a readable history of advocacy and the many factors that have shaped it, and takes a far wider view of the history of advocacy than many titles, analysing the 20th Century developments which are often overlooked. This book will be of interest to general readers, law practitioners interested in how advocacy has developed in courts of yesteryear, teachers of advocacy who want to locate there subject in history and impart this to their students, and to law students curious about the origins of what they are learning.

In this first full-length account of Helena Normanton’s life and career, Judith Bourne tells of her fight to join the Bar of England and Wales and open it up to women. Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women describes how her ambition was forged as a child after seeing her mother patronised by a solicitor. It tells how the press were quick to pigeon-hole and harass her, leading to disciplinary proceedings for ‘self-advertising’. Enmeshed in a world of men, Helena Normanton faced a constant struggle to establish herself against a backdrop of prejudice, misogyny and discrimination. The book describes how solicitors, fearful of the unknown, were reluctant to instruct her, leaving her to take on poor person’s cases, dock briefs and those few cases ‘deemed suitable for a woman’. But Helena Normanton was a force to be reckoned with. She was not just the first woman to be admitted to an Inn of Court, hold briefs in the High Court and Old Bailey, and (as one of two women) be made a King’s Counsel, but a prolific author, leading feminist and speaker who entranced audiences at home and abroad. Along with the controversies that eternally surrounded her and her own foibles, this is all contained in this captivating book. Reviews '[ An ] excellent biography of Helena Normanton, brilliantly researched by Judith Bourne... a captivating book for all aspiring barristers to read'-- Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers. ‘Bourne has succeeded in rendering Normanton as a human being, a woman with grit and aspiration, whose experiences were as often disappointing as celebratory in the context of her time and place’-- Professor Mary Jane Mossman (from the Foreword)

Modern criminal courts are characteristically the domain of lawyers, with trials conducted in an environment of formality and solemnity, where facts are found and legal rules are impartially applied to administer justice. Recent historical scholarship has shown that in England lawyers only began to appear in ordinary criminal trials during the eighteenth century, however, and earlier trials often took place in an atmosphere of noise and disorder, where the behaviour of the crowd - significant body language, meaningful looks, and audible comment - could influence decisively the decisions of jurors and judges. This collection of essays considers this transition from early scenes of popular participation to the much more orderly and professional legal proceedings typical of the nineteenth century, and links this with another important shift, the mushroom growth of popular news and comment about trials and punishments which occurred from the later seventeenth century. It hypothesizes that the popular participation which had been a feature of courtroom proceedings before the mid-eighteenth century was not stifled by ’lawyerization’, but rather partly relocated to the ’public sphere’ of the press, partly because of some changes connected with the work of the lawyers. Ranging from the early 1700s to the mid-nineteenth century, and taking account of criminal justice proceedings in Scotland, as well as England, the essays consider whether pamphlets, newspapers, ballads and crime fiction provided material for critical perceptions of criminal justice proceedings, or alternatively helped to convey the official ’majesty’ intended to legitimize the law. In so doing the volume opens up fascinating vistas upon the cultural history of Britain’s legal system over the ’long eighteenth century'.

At a time when problems of crime and antisocial behaviour stimulate debate on big society solutions, this book provides an exceptional means of tracing a line of response which began at the end of the 18th century. Nipping Crime in the Bud explores the origins and development of the Philanthropic Society (and its influence on contemporary institutions) amid growing alarm about crime levels, Draconian sentences under England’s Bloody Code and a paucity of effective crime prevention measures. Driven by Enlightenment zeal and ideals, this was the first voluntary sector charity devoted to ‘nipping crime in the bud’. It did so through education, training, accom­modation, mentoring and support for young people. Uniquely, the book traces the first hard won policy networks and partnerships between government and the voluntary sector. It reveals how—sometimes against the odds, with funding on a knife edge but constantly striving for effective answers—influential philan­thropists rose to the challenge and changed approaches to young people involved in crime and delinquency, traces of which endure today within the great crime prevention charities which still rally to this cause. Muriel Whitten’s book draws on previously neglected archival sources and other first-hand research to create a formidable and illuminating account about what, for many people, will be a missing chapter in English social and legal history.

An account of the lawyers who helped — over centuries — to develop and protect civil liberties, human rights and the Rule of Law. Also discusses breaches of the Rule of Law in modern cases and in response to terrorism. Champions of the Rule of Law looks at an overarching principle of English law. It describes how a powerful and fundamental rule came about and how it has been preserved in the face of attempts to circumvent it. Standing at the heart of all matters of justice — and now exported to many parts of the world — the Rule of Law holds, in short, that the law applies in equal measure to everyone. No matter how high, mighty or privileged someone may be, or whatever claim or allegation is being made, all those coming before it should always be treated in just the same way as anyone else will be. Events in both modern times and across legal history readily demonstrate the sometimes precarious nature of the rule and the need for ‘champions’ who are prepared to uphold and defend it—and whilst the need for such a rule may seem obvious on any balanced view of how justice should be dispensed, the central importance of the rule is by no means intuitive to some people. This means that there is always a need to re-iterate the purpose of the rule, the arguments behind it and to understand the mechanisms which safeguard and protect it. Whenever the Rule of Law does fall under threat, whether due to arrogance, claims to special treatment, misguided understandings, dubious explanations or lack of due process, there is a need for people of the calibre of those described in this book to step forward. Quite apart from the book’s interest for lawyers, historians and students it will appeal to anyone seeking reassurance that justice is truly blind, fair, even-handed and accessible to all. With a Foreword by Lord Steyn.