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32
I
IOBITUARY
CONSTANTINE CURRAN, S.C., D.Liu.
An Appreciation
Con Curran as he was known to generations of solicitors
was a familiar figure in the Four Courts where he
worked for more than forty years until his retirement
twenty years ago. There can be few if any members who
still relllember him as a young clerk in the King's
Bench Division where he commenced his career serving
under the judges of the old regime. There he would
have lllet solicitors who had heen admitted as attornies
before the Judicature Act,
1875.
To those like the writer
who began practice in the thirties he was a beloved and
respected figure. He belonged to a corps of experts who
saved the sum of things when the heavens were falling
hetween
1922
and
1924.
I t is sometimes forgotten that
to Curran and his colleagues the registrars, exallliners
and officers of the Courts, even more almost than to
the judges, belongs a credit of keeping a legal system
in being during those momentuous years. The names of
Phipps, Pilkington, Adderley, Healy and others were
symbols of awe to the tyro. Con Curran always adopted
the paternal approach with a mixture of expertise and
humility. To a zealous practitioner who had diffidently
pointed out a slip in a document which Curran had
drafted he once said: "You seem to be the only person
who ever reads mv orders."
What a pity he left no lIlemoirs. His recollections
lllust have included all the worthies and eccentrics of
AIIB:
Behind every
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business
there'sa
ROOd
bank.
1l10re than half a century in the legal and literary
world. He could remember the time when the repository
of Court files was in the gallery high in the dome above
the round hall of the old Four Courts from which
haskets of documents were lowered by ropes on pulleys
when required in the various Courts. For some reason
of indolence or diffidence his literary output was scat–
tered and comparatively small but it had the quality of
rarity. He once confided to the writer that writing
excited but exhausted him. His memories included such
varied characters as Joyce, Synge, Pallas, Kennedy and
the survivors of the old and the progenitors of the new
legal regime. His interests covered the fields of law
literature, architecture and the pictorial art. Senior
Counsel and doctor of literature, he adorned the pro–
fession and if he had been bold enough to write his own
epitaph it might be :
Home sum; humani
Nil amI: alienum puto.
He did, however, leave a memorial which is of interest
to llH'mbers of the legal profession in a contribution to
the record of the centenary of the Society's charter in
1952.
It is entitled "Figures in the Hall" and will he
reproduced in the February
Gazette.
Con Curran, who died recently at the age of ninety
years, was called to the Bar in
1910,
and to the Senior
Bar in
1935.
He eventually became Registrar of the
SupreTlle Court in
1946
and retired in
1952.
He became
a Doctor of Literature
Honnri.r Causa
of the National
University of Ireland in
1949.
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