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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-
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