The Practice

Quentin Dodd


Bridge Books £9

James Morton


When he retired from practice, Quentin Dodd was asked by his partners to look into the claim that the Mold firm of Keene & Kelly had effectively been established before the French Revolution. He expected it to take a little while – and, indeed, it was a project that grew and grew.


In fact, when he started opening tin box after old tin box, he found records going back to Charles I and there were copies of bills delivered sometime before 1685. The earliest partners always had philanthropy in their minds. There is still a record that in 1784 books were purchased for use in the gaol at Flint.


This is the story of almost the first 400 hundred years of the firm, one that has undergone many changes over the centuries. It would be improbable that over the years there had not been one or two defaulters among the principals, and, since everyone loves a rogue, these make for some of the most interesting of the stories.


In February 1820, one who had been embezzling avoided a visit to the Assizes by shooting himself – and there was a massive cover-up.


Some 30 years later, another local solicitor, whose hands had also been in the till, absented himself, reappearing in Australia from where, after a couple of years, he sent for his wife and daughter.


Later, partners were rather finer citizens. One, Robin Kelly, was the first under-sheriff to become High Sheriff. Another, Tony Keene, led his volunteer company of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in the Boer War.



The book is dotted with local social history, including a report from an edition of the Chester Chronicle of 1891 of a Mold man enamoured with a lady from Chester who, protecting her, and no doubt his, reputation from gossips, took to taking the train from a neighbouring halt. Unfortunately, one day while waiting for the train he sat on an ant’s nest. He was obliged to try to get rid of the insects from his ‘unmentionables’ by shaking his trousers out of the window. He dropped them, borrowed a blanket and gave a man a guinea to get him another pair. The man promptly disappeared with the windfall. A second guinea and another man produced a pair several sizes too small. Unfortunately, there is no record of whether the courtship survived.


Quentin Dodd has provided a most engaging account of a bygone era. The passing is something he clearly regrets. Commenting on the technological improvements in the form of a computer he writes: ‘The human based and operated system had to be jettisoned for one less efficient.’ Many practitioners would agree with him.