Judges and Humour in Britain: From Anecdotes to Jokes

This chapter surveys the wealth of humorous tales told about British judges and advocates from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, particularly in the criminal courts over which the judges presided, where humour either designedly or inadvertently could provide a disruption of the normally solemn proceedings. Published and archival collections of such humorous anecdotes largely refer to what happens in open court, including witty remarks by the judges and impudent ripostes by barristers. Lawyers collected and treasured such interchanges, together with tales of judicial eccentricity, as part of the folklore of their profession. Published as anthologies, they found a popular audience as well. In the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, trials were extensively reported in the press and judges became part of an Establishment celebrity culture. Some judges were tempted to play to this press gallery by producing witty bons mots. Other anecdotes deal with mishaps in court. Some are apocryphal, or else floating tales ascribed to legal figures known to be humorously acerbic. The distinctions between formal set-piece jokes about judges (of which in contrast to the United States, there is no discernible body in the United Kingdom) and humorous anecdotes (which purport to be true stories full of accurate detail) are analysed and discussed. Over time, anecdotes evolve variants and are switched to new settings and targets. Anecdotes are becoming more portable and context-free and thus increasingly taking on much of the structure of jokes. The boundary between the two categories is becoming porous.