Friday 27 November 2015

Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: momma’s baby, poppa’s maybe


Genealogy is the second most visited category of website after pornography, according to ABC News in America. That is impossible to verify, but I wonder how much of the internet is used for genealogy porn – dodgy conclusions drawn by self-indulgent hobbyists from evidence that won’t stand up. I overheard quite a bit of that when I was hanging around in public records offices.
 
Today's case came about because the Pringle clan, seeking to confirm who should be chief, decided to bring scientific rigour to the proceedings. They organised DNA tests for men in the family. Just asking for trouble. And they got it. 

A mother was posthumously discovered to have given birth to the child of a man not her husband.

‘It was my instruction that it was a great surprise,’ says counsel.

Maybe she was following a primeval imperative to rev up the gene pool. Her handsome son, Lt-Gen Sir Steuart Pringle, 10th Baronet, had a distinguished military career and, according to his Daily Telegraph obituary, was ‘noted for his intellect, shrewdness and acerbic sense of humour.’

The DNA test result is not disputed. Instead, the court is examining how legitimacy and biological descent are related - ‘factors which are more important than the possible truth,’ as counsel puts it.  

In the matter of Baronetcy of Pringle of Stichill is causing an establishment frisson because of its implications for holders of hereditary titles, and is the only Privy Council case this term to be heard by seven justices rather than the usual five.


It isn't a tussle to see who inherits the Spode: there is no estate at stake, no proto-Chatsworth. It is about, as Lord Reed puts it, ‘the honour of holding the title.’

 







In court I spot two people who resemble Archibald Skirving’s pastel portrait of Mrs John Pringle of Stitchell [sic], née Mary Drummond (1719–1804).

It starts with a bang. The bench tells both teams that their arguments should give more consideration to Scottish law, so there will have to be a further hearing. After a dazed ten-minute adjournment, counsel resume starting positions.

Counsel: ‘It is rather unfortunate that events have taken this turn.’

Lord Neuberger: ‘Well, we are where we are.’

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council knows where and what it is. But what am I? I mean, like you care, but bear with me.



This is a detail from my father's birth certificate.


And this is a detail from his marriage certificate.

These tight-lipped inked lines are the only images I have of my unnamed grandfather. My parents didn't tell me about my father's illegitimacy until my sister and I worked it out independently. To them it was a stigma. I'm not telling you what could or should be, only what was the pattern of those times. When I see a pregnant woman, my conditioned reflex is to glance at her ring finger.
 
I never met my father’s mother. I don't know what she looked like. I wasn’t told her Christian name. I was brought up far from Toxteth, the lair of unmentionable family secrets.

So a few years ago, when those who could have been hurt were dead or cocooned by dementia, I followed the ancestry trail and joined some of the dots.



In 1918, Annie Williams was an 18-year-old who worked in a munitions factory in Liverpool and lived with her parents. Assuming that her pregnancy ran to a normal term, my father was conceived on or around the Whitsun bank holiday. She never said who the father was.

My father was born in 1919 and brought up by Annie's mother. 



In 1923 Annie married a docker called Jimmy. Six months after the wedding she gave birth. They had four children. Jimmy, Annie and their growing brood lived in the same street as my father, who never entered their home and kept apart from his half-siblings. 

I traced Jimmy’s only surviving child. 'Are you Arthur's girl?' she said immediately, as if she'd been waiting for me to ring. ‘Me dad would offer ’im sweets to come in the ’ouse and play with the other children but ’e never did. We always thought ’e was a shy boy who liked to be by ’imself. Gorra go now, luv.’

Annie died aged 88 in Skellington Fold, Liverpool. Old bones. 
I'll give this one a shot of watercolour

Further reading

Counsel are relying heavily on A Treatise on the Law of Adulterine Bastardy by Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (1836), still in print and free online. 

“You girls are my vocation. If I were to receive a proposal of marriage tomorrow from the Lord Lyon King of Arms I would decline it. I am dedicated to you in my prime.”
                             – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark.

That makes him some dude but in court we’re told that the Lord Lyon King of Arms, who handles heraldic spats north of the border, found himself unable to deal with the matter in hand. 

Edmund: …Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake?

King Lear, Shakespeare

Is there any chance that you and I might be related? 

Arthur Williams, 1919-2014





If you see anyone who looks like my father, let me know





















Bist du bei mir

Postscript: garbage from the Daily Telegraph - predictive text is a killer:

Monday 9 November 2015

Bid to be drawn by me - charity auction 16 Nov, Inner Temple

Never mind Christie's, are you free to attend a quiz night at the Inner Temple on 16 November (tickets £100)? Incentives are a) Clive Anderson as quiz master and b) my drawing services as one of the auction items.

If you're the top bidder I'll sketch you and/or something else you like. If you provide biscuits I might throw in a free frame. (All the money goes to charity, not to me.) And I'd rather draw your kitten than you.

Here are some I prepared earlier:

 ...a leaf (Ricinus communis)...









...the RCJ...











...the RCJ again...









 ...the Supreme Court...

...a life class model....























...model, fire-eater and international champion pole performer Ayumi LaNoire...








Z2K and the Bar Pro Bono Unit present the Clive Anderson Quiz Night at 7pm on Monday 16 Nov, Inner Temple Hall.

Wednesday 4 November 2015

Supreme Court: Trunki business

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

- William Blake, The Tyger















Nature rips itself off without compunction. Here's a leaf-tailed gecko, copying foliage to stay alive:









Plants and animals don't have image rights (correct me if you must). The immortal hand or eye doesn't claim copyright on creation, and evolution would make that area of law very murky anyway, so the entrepreneurial designer Rob Law re-framed the tiger for his Trunki children's ride-on suitcase:

Then his business rivals had a go with their not dissimilar Kiddee Case:

It's not just the tigers which are in contention today. To depict the relentless colours of the fauna in court I've brought wax crayons. And I'm guessing a bit. From my restricted-view seat I can spot a flash of orange in front of the bench but not enough to see whether it's a Trunki or a Kiddee Case.

Just one issue is being examined in PMS International Limited v Magmatic Limited: what is the significance - in design infringement terms - of the fact that there is no surface decoration on Trunki's Community registered design? I hope counsel will be very clear in their arguments: overlooking the scene is a portrait of John Fielding, the blind magistrate. 

The unsung hero is drawing - not the wispy stuff I do but ye olde measured drawing. A key question today is whether proper line drawings - rather than a 3D-effect monochrome computer-aided design - would have clarified what the Trunki image rights were supposed to protect. 

The other day I was watching a short film of a dinosaur skeleton being excavated.  Cameras were there, yes, and paleontologists brushing sand from vertebrae - but also a patient artist making an essential record of what the camera can't see. 

Above, right: Magmatic Limited Registered Design no. 000043427-0001

Meanwhile I'm wasting time drawing a Friesian cow when I notice that counsel has his knee on the table. Alternate knees but mainly the left. In full flow he switches rapidly from one knee to the other. Without falling over. His spine and suit are under enormous strain.



Later on I try this at home. Don't. Fronting up to the Supreme Court bench can define careers and must always generate a huge slug of adrenalin, but even so this is the most interesting forensic fight-or-flight posture I have ever seen.
 
Come the evening I'm on my way to an event when in an inadvertently Faustian way I conjure up Lord Neuberger on the wet pavement. He's had a busy day facing garish plastic followed by a London commute and won't want to be accosted by a random fan.

I get to the event, a fundraising talk for portersprogressuk.org by ace mountaineer Stephen Venables. Luke Hughes is there. I accost him. He'll know how high the Supreme Court barristers' benches are. He designed them, and my kitchen table. 74cm is the answer.

He is also a gifted mountaineer and has climbed the north face of the Eiger with Venables while discussing Mozart and Proust as they do. Heights hold no fears for Hughes. He talks of overcoming the Ministry of Justice's health-and-safety fears about installing ladders in the Supreme Court library.

I've met him before, when he was giving a talk in the Supreme Court. On that occasion he asked me if I was a climber. I can't even rest my knee on my desk.






Update: on seeing this post a friend wrote: 'I did jury service earlier this year. The mangled postures of the barristers were the most fascinating thing about it.'

@otium_Catulle