All articles by James Morton – Page 12
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News
Poetic licence
One of Australia’s great literary hoaxes was played on the intellectual magazine ...
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News
Dressing down
Somehow West London Magistrates’ Court in Southcombe Street near Barons Court tube station seemed more informal than Bow Street and Marlborough Street, certainly so far as dress code was concerned. I remember at Marlborough Street seeing my friend, the giant Irishman David Sarch, appearing one morning in a Prince of ...
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News
Right stipes
A London stipe once said to me that, after his appointment, the first five years were learning, the second five were interesting and the remaining 10 were waiting for his pension. Certainly, some of them played with lawyers they knew to keep themselves amused. One said to me when I ...
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Crims on rims?
Down under, there is currently a racing scandal to rank alongside the travails of four British jockeys who have, subject to any appeal, lost their licences.
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News
Lawyer, heal thyself
I see that John Osborne’s 1964 play Inadmissible Evidence has been revived to its usual ecstatic reviews. The Daily Telegraph’s critic said he had little doubt that the character was ‘ripped straight from the dramatist’s own mind and heart and set down on paper’.
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News
Off to the gulag
It was suggested following the summer riots that teachers should be given more power to discipline pupils. This reminded me of the late magistrate David Fingleton, who liked to say that since the death of Sir Robin Day he was now the rudest member of the Garrick.
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News
Fatal attraction
One of the saddest stories I ever heard about a lawyer in love was that of New Zealander Gary Alderdice - known as ‘Never Plead Guilty Gary’. After the collapse of his marriage in the 1990s, the Hong Kong-based Alderdice started making trips on the hydrofoil to neighbouring Macau (pictured). ...
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News
Fatal attraction
One of the saddest stories I ever heard about a lawyer in love was that of New Zealander Gary Alderdice - known as ‘Never Plead Guilty Gary’. After the collapse of his marriage in the 1990s, the Hong Kong-based Alderdice started making trips on the hydrofoil to neighbouring Macau (pictured). ...
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News
Fatal attraction
One of the saddest stories I ever heard about a lawyer in love was that of New Zealander Gary Alderdice - known as ‘Never Plead Guilty Gary’. After the collapse of his marriage in the 1990s, the Hong Kong-based Alderdice started making trips on the hydrofoil to neighbouring Macau (pictured). ...
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News
‘Mad Fred’ Rondel
By the time I met Norbert ‘Mad Fred’ Rondel, the club owner acquitted of organising the robbery which led to the Spaghetti House siege in 1975, he was a relatively benign old man selling second-hand cars in Lambeth. Could I find him a computer to help with the resurrection of ...
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Moral entrepreneurs
Some years ago, when I was rather reluctantly having the principles of criminology drilled into me, one of the concepts that interested me most was what was called a symbolic crusade with moral entrepreneurs. It comes about when a group of reformers seizes upon a topic ...
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Character study
One of the first offices I worked in as a young lawyer were rented on a floor of a Dickensian building which, for the purposes, may be deemed to be within a two-mile radius of the law courts.
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Cheats sometimes prosper
One of my favourite jokes is about the two men who went for a job interview. Set a test, each scored nine out of 10 and the man who was not selected complained. ‘It’s simple,’ the manager explained. ‘You each ...
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News
Opening Dors
Sometimes I wonder how I ever managed to qualify. In those days the Law Society’s College of Law (or was it school in the 1950s?) was in Lancaster Gate. Even in the early morning, the pavement from Lancaster Gate tube ...
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News
Food glorious food
Thirty-five years ago, not long after the Gazette became a weekly, I wrote the editorials, writes James Morton. Not all of them of course – since I didn’t know a thing about anything except criminal law (and not much about that) but a fair number. For some reason, the then ...
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Polishing the angels
When I tell people I am writing about organised crime down under, they often say ‘I didn’t know there was any’, writes James Morton. Oh, but there is. A big gangland war in Melbourne is coming to an end, mainly because there is only one man left standing. In the ...
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Confessions of a divorce lawyer
Geoffrey Rutter’s comments on defended divorces remind me of the days when fashionable barristers could appear in lists of those about whom the readers of popular newspapers would like to read, writes James Morton. In 1935, barrister Norman Birkett appeared in 20th place, equal with the ...
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Barrister Billy: quick on the draw
Back in the 1960s and 70s, in a hopeless case – for example, if the defendant refused to plead guilty to bank robbery even though he had been photographed inside the bank, had three identifying witnesses, and was found with the money stuffed behind his fireplace and had made a ...
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Feature
BOOK REVIEW Gangland Soho
Author: James Morton The Gazette’s own James Morton, stalwart of Obiter, is a serial chronicler of London’s inter- and post-War gangland and its retinue of hangers-on, including the often dubious lawyers and journalists who operated on its fringes. ...
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Catching clients
One of the troubles with criminal clients of the 1970s was their ‘out of court – out of mind’ syndrome, writes James Morton.