The Gazette 1972

ill-disposed persons". The hall was lifted to a higher plane when in 1823 the Benchers gave permission to the rector and church wardens of St. Michan's to use the hall for divine service while repairs were proceeding in the old church. On the other hand, the Benchers showed themselves more reluctant to provide for carnal man— at least in this hall. A minute of 1852 records the appli- cation of the Dublin Shoeblacks' Society to allow one of their members to stand in the great hall of the Four Courts to black the boots of the Bar and Judges, etc. The application was granted but only so far as to per- mit a shoeblack to stand under the piazza of each square of the Courts. Two years later the Court officers got busy and "on the solicitation of several of the offi- cials of the Courts, permission was given to Margaret Heffernan to have a stand for the sale of oysters in the yard". The hall itself was still tabu. In 1886 it was formally decided that: "No tables be allowed in the hall of the Four Courts for the sale of eatables," but in 1867 the concession was made "on the recommendation of Edward Litton, Master in Chancery, that Mary Sullivan be permitted to have a fruit and cake stand outside the entrance to the Masters' offices." I do not know at what date or under what circumstances Mary Sullivan and her family won their way inside, but win it they did. The Hall used for Lord Chancellor's Levee The hall was also the assembly place of the Judges after the Lord Chancellor's levée at the opening of the Easter Term and before they proceeded in processional order to the Benchers' Chamber. On the morning of levée day the Bar in robes called upon the Lord Chan- cellor at his residence and made their bows to him in his drawing room. The tipstaves, as Mr. Matthew Taylor has told me, took fast trotting horses and cars to the Court, followed after a decent interval by the Lord Chancellor and Judges, the Lord Chancellor in Court dress, velvet suit, long knee breeches with lace ruffles at neck and sleeves, the Judges of the Court of Appeal in their black and gold-edged robes, and the High Court Judges in red. The Lord Chancellor's carriage stopped at the front entrance and, preceded by the two tipstaves and his mace bearer and followed by his train bearer, and purse-bearer, the Lord Chancellor entered the hall and passing up on a red drugget carpet took his place opposite the entrance on a scarlet carpet under the clock, his tipstaves and attendants lining up at the side. The other judges then alighted from their carriages and in order of precedence passed before the Lord Chancellor and remained at either side until the Lord Chancellor turned and headed the procession in the same order to the Benchers' Chamber at the rere of the building. The Hall, a place for consultations Long after the hall had ceased to be a gapeseed and lounge for idlers it remained a place for consultation until by slow degrees library accommodation was pro- vided. As that provision was made the loungers in the hall gave way to statues, and the two apple-women, who down to our own day had their stands for oranges, apples, and gingerbread under the clock, enjoyed only a professional clientele. In the place of the go«sipers a new figure took up its place in the centre of the hall. No one knows whence came this figure of Truth nor at what date she aliehted on our stony ground, holding her torch aloft. I find her first mentioned in The Citizen (December 18401 when she is already the butt of ribaldry "For the interior of the Courts," says its

correspondent (probably Mulvany), "we daily tremble. The Gas Woman whom we have recently been scan- dalised to see established in the centre of the hall is below all comment of a critical kind. Who subscribed for it? Who made it? To what inspiration of the Board of Works was it due? Was it set up in allegory or satire? Was her torch, in truth, gas-lit?" I do not know. But in April 1880 Truth or the Gas Woman quit the precincts. The Daily Express of that date notes that "this extraordinary figure was removed to an unknown destination". This was on the occasion of the erection of the Whiteside statue. She is now in the garden of the King's Inns and the Under-Treasurer tells me that the boys of the neighbourhood know her as Henrietta. Sir Michael O'Loghlen As the years went on six statues were set up in the hall in front of the niches in the great piers. Four were standing figures, two sitting, and there was place for two more. Reading from the left of the clock their posi- tion to the best of my recollection was: Plunket, O'Loghlen, Joy, Sheil, Whiteside and O'Hagan. This was not their original order for O'Loghlen and Joy were moved round when Whiteside took his stand. The first to go up was Sir Michael Colman O'Loghlen, Master of the Rolls. The Bar met to consider this memorial in January 1843 a few weeks after his death but whether action immediately followed I do not know. The statue, a figure of the Rolls, robed and seated, was by the Belfast sculptor Patrick McDowell, R.A. O'Loghlen was a compact little gentleman with a large head expressing caution, sagacity and kindness. The first Catholic to be appointed Law Officer or Judge since 1688, he was the subject of three such memorials, all seated figures, this one in the hall subscribed for by the Irish Bar, another by Christopher Moore, R.H.A., erected by the solicitors which adorned their hall in the Four Courts until June 1922, and a third, less successful, by Thomas Kirk, R.H.A., erected by public subscription in the Ennis Courthouse, for O'Loghlen was a Clareman. Our statue was in its place to the left of the entrance certainly in 1851, as appears from verses of that date in the Irish Quarterly Review, and seems to have been then the only statue in the hall. In 1880 its position was changed to the entrance of the Chancery Court. Chief Baron Joy Next I think, came Chief Baron Joy (1763-1835)— the work of his grand-nephew, Bruce Joy, who was the sculptor of the fine seated figure of Whiteside in the northern aisle of St. Patrick's. The statue was presented to the Benchers by the Dean and Chapter of St. Pat- rick's, and was erected in the hall in 1865. It was orig- inally placed beside the Queen's Bench but on White- side's advent in 1880 it was moved to a more appro- priate place by his own Exchequer. Sitting in his robes he made a rather formidable figure, an impressive monu- ment larger than life-size with, I thought, an Egyptian severity which tallied well with Sheil's unflattering description of the man : "His deportment is in keeping with his physiognomy . . . the figure of a mandarin receiving an ambassador and, with contemptuous cour- tesy, proposing to him the ceremony of the ko-tou. He is extremelv polite, but his politeness is as Chinese as his look, and appears to be dictated rather by a sense of what he owes to himself than by any deference to the Der«nn who has the misfortune to be its obiect, and yet with all this assumption of dignity, Mr. Toy is not precisely dignified. He is in a perpetual effort to sustain his consequence . . . a spy upon his own impor- 46