I was talking about the courts and I told you the tale of Charlie the shoplifter. Maybe there are a few other characters I can drag out of my distant memory. Strangely the faces that stand out most are all solicitors. There was one guy, not in Lincoln, who represented most of the reprobates in town. In fact you could be pretty certain that anyone he appeared for was probably guilty and his main function was to ensure that the sentence was as low as possible. He could tell a sad tale and pull at the magistrates’ heart strings and mostly got his own way.
He appeared almost every week and we became quite good friends. In fact in breaks between cases we would often chat over a cigarette or two in the waiting area. Then there was another rising star who had his own business with his name over the door. He earned quite a reputation for being able to secure a not guilty verdict and so some of the worst types in town were on his books. There was a huge outcry some time later when it turned out he was making money on the side and he was charged with fraud, found guilty and sent down for a couple of years. Perhaps magistrates have long memories!
One thing I should discuss while I’m writing about Lincoln is the Coroner’s Court at the castle. As I said a while ago, the part of the building that was the court is now the souvenir shop, but back then it was a proper court room with high wooden railings around the sides of the witness box. It felt old and quite depressing really. Over the years it must have heard some horrible stories. Coroners hear some disturbing facts and need to be tough people. That’s why they’re often medical people in their day jobs. In fact our coroner in Lincoln was a GP and one of the people on his books was a colleague of mine. She said it was deeply worrying when she went to see him because he recognised her from the court and would sometimes talk about his cases. (Without giving away anything he shouldn’t, of course.) She reckoned he was always measuring her up silently as a potential inquest. I was registered at a different surgery, thank heavens.
The thing about courts was that the press were often allowed to stay when members of the public were asked to leave. It was understood that we wouldn’t ever use anything we heard while we were allowed to stay. But sometimes it helped us understand the background and that helped us to write a better story in the long term. It also meant that we heard some really gruesome stuff sometimes. actually, swapping inquest stories and trying to out gross each other was a common journalistic past time. The kind of pub conversation that could clear a room! Motorcyclists were always a source of stunning tales. Like the one who rode into the back of a bus, head down, and caused a lot of consternation among the police who couldn’t find his head.
They took what was available of him to the mortuary where the pathologist began a post mortem while the search for the head continued. The doctor found it for them. When he opened up the chest wall he found the head, still wearing its crash helmet, inside. The impact was so strong it broke his neck and pushed the head downwards. He wouldn’t have felt much, apparently. Unlike another guy who was cleaning out a grain silo when his work mates decided to fill it without checking where he was. The corn was poured in on top of him and he drowned in it.
Then there was another guy who was working in a factory where they boiled down animal waste to make glue, among other things. He was walking past a boiler when the seal failed and the door sprang open, spraying hot animal innards all over him and boiling him to death. There were car crashes where drivers were thrown out of their seats, electrocutions, runaway lorries that ploughed into houses . You couldn’t make these up. Well, I couldn’t, and I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve been taking part in NaNoWriNo that I can dream up some pretty creative ways to kill off my characters.
They weren’t all awful, although obviously they all involved a death, someone’s loved one gone, and there were grieving relatives to be considered in every case. You had to be careful how you discussed the details, nothing too gory and definitely not sensationalist. But you can see why I would spend time staring out of the window at the virginia creeper on the crown court walls. On sunny days it positively glowed, and it helped take away the pain of dealing with an unpleasant topic.
One thing you had to remember was that Coroner’s Court had special rules. It wasn’t reported in quite the same way. Under certain circumstances coroners had findings, not verdicts. The official terms were different and you had to keep the right bits in the right places.
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