The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney

The Experiences of a Barrister,
and Confessions of an Attorney

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Title: The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney
Author: Samuel Warren
Release Date: May 18, 2004 [EBook #12371]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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EXPERIENCES OF A BARRISTER ***

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THE EXPERIENCES OF A BARRISTER,
AND
Confessions of an Attorney.
BY SAMUEL WARREN
1880

CONTENTS.
THE MARCH ASSIZE
THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT
THE CONTESTED MARRIAGE
THE MOTHER AND SON
"THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS"
ESTHER MASON
THE MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT
THE SECOND MARRIAGE
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
"THE ACCOMMODATION BILL"
THE REFUGEE
THE LIFE POLICY
BIGAMY OR NO BIGAMY
JANE ECCLES
"EVERY MAN HIS OWN LAWYER"
THE CHEST OF DRAWERS
THE PUZZLE
THE ONE BLACK SPOT
THE GENTLEMAN BEGGAR
A FASHIONABLE FORGER
THE YOUNG ADVOCATE
A MURDER IN THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

CONFESSIONS OF AN ATTORNEY.

THE MARCH ASSIZE.
Something more than half a century ago, a person, in going along
Holborn, might have seen, near the corner of one of the thoroughfares
which diverge towards Russell Square, the respectable-looking shop of
a glover and haberdasher named James Harvey, a man generally
esteemed by his neighbors, and who was usually considered well to do
in the world. Like many London tradesmen, Harvey was originally
from the country. He had come up to town when a poor lad, to push his
fortune, and by dint of steadiness and civility, and a small property left
him by a distant relation, he had been able to get into business on his
own account, and to attain that most important element of success in

London--"a connection." Shortly after setting up in the world, he
married a young woman from his native town, to whom he had been
engaged ever since his school-days; and at the time our narrative
commences he was the father of three children.
James Harvey's establishment was one of the best frequented of its
class in the street. You could never pass without seeing customers
going in or out. There was evidently not a little business going forward.
But although, to all appearance, a flourishing concern, the proprietor of
the establishment was surprised to find that he was continually pinched
in his circumstances. No matter what was the amount of business
transacted over the counter, he never got any richer.
At the period referred to, shop-keeping had not attained that degree of
organization, with respect to counter-men and cashiers, which now
distinguishes the great houses of trade. The primitive till was not yet
superseded. This was the weak point in Harvey's arrangements; and not
to make a needless number of words about it, the poor man was
regularly robbed by a shopman, whose dexterity in pitching a guinea
into the drawer, so as to make it jump, unseen, with a jerk into his hand,
was worthy of Herr Dobler, or any other master of the sublime art of
jugglery.
Good-natured and unsuspicious, perhaps also not sufficiently vigilant,
Harvey was long in discovering how he was pillaged. Cartwright, the
name of the person who was preying on his employer, was not a young
man. He was between forty and fifty years of age, and had been in
various situations, where he had always given satisfaction, except on
the score of being somewhat gay and somewhat irritable. Privately, he
was a man of loose habits, and for years his extravagances had been
paid for by property clandestinely abstracted from his too-confiding
master. Slow to believe in the reality of such wickedness, Mr. Harvey
could with difficulty entertain the suspicions which began to dawn on
his mind. At length all doubt was at an end. He detected Cartwright in
the very act of carrying off goods to a considerable amount. The man
was tried at the Old Bailey for the offence; but through a technical
informality in the indictment, acquitted.
Unable to find employment, and with a character gone, the liberated
thief became savage, revengeful, and desperate. Instead of imputing his
fall to his own irregularities, he considered his late unfortunate

employer as the cause of his ruin; and now he bent all the energies of
his dark nature to destroy the reputation of the man whom he had
betrayed and plundered. Of all the beings self-delivered to the rule of
unscrupulous malignity, with whom it has been my fate to come