Sir Matthew Hale was an influential English barrister, judge and jurist most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown.
Sir Edward Coke was an English barrister, judge, and politician. He is often considered the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.
Sir John Clifford Mortimer was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author. He is best known for novels about a barrister named Horace Rumpole.
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The street outside follows the route of the ancient wall around the City of London, which was part of the fortification's bailey, hence the metonymic name.
Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine, was a British Whig lawyer and politician. He served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain between 1806 and 1807 in the Ministry of All the Talents.
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, a middle-aged London barrister who defended a broad variety of clients, often underdogs. The TV series led to the stories being presented in other media, including books and radio.
Woolmington v DPP [1935] AC 462 is a landmark House of Lords case, where the presumption of innocence was re-consolidated.
Alan Armstrong, known professionally as Alun Armstrong, is an English character actor. He grew up in County Durham in North East England, and first became interested in acting through Shakespeare productions at his grammar school. Since his career began in the early 1970s, he has played, in his words, "the full spectrum of characters from the grotesque to musicals... I always play very colourful characters, often a bit crazy, despotic, psychotic".
Guy Henry is an English actor whose roles include Henrik Hanssen in Holby City, Pius Thicknesse in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2, Gaius Cassius Longinus in Rome and Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One.
Ada Chard Williams was a baby farmer who was convicted of strangling to death 21-month-old Selina Ellen Jones in Barnes in London in September 1899.
Delope is the practice of deliberately wasting one's first shot in a pistol duel, an attempt to abort the conflict. The Irish code duello forbids the practice.
Lyndsey Marshal is an English actress best known for her performance in The Hours, and as the recurring character Cleopatra on HBO's Rome, and as Lady Sarah Hill in BBC period drama Garrow's Law.
Sir William Garrow was an English barrister, politician and judge known for his indirect reform of the advocacy system, which helped usher in the adversarial court system used in most common law nations today. He introduced the phrase "presumed innocent until proven guilty", insisting that defendants' accusers and their evidence be thoroughly tested in court. Born to a priest and his wife in Monken Hadley, then in Middlesex, Garrow was educated at his father's school in the village before being apprenticed to Thomas Southouse, an attorney in Cheapside, which preceded a pupillage with Mr. Crompton, a special pleader. A dedicated student of the law, Garrow frequently observed cases at the Old Bailey; as a result Crompton recommended that he become a solicitor or barrister. Garrow joined Lincoln's Inn in November 1778, and was called to the Bar on 27 November 1783. He quickly established himself as a criminal defence counsel, and in February 1793 was made a King's Counsel by HM Government to prosecute cases involving treason and felonies.
Andrew Neil Buchan is an English actor and writer. He is known for his roles as Mark Latimer in the ITV drama Broadchurch (2013–17), Scott Foster in the BBC political drama Party Animals (2007), John Mercer in ITV drama series The Fixer (2008–09), and William Garrow in BBC period drama Garrow's Law (2009–11).
Stephen Lushington, generally known as Dr Lushington, was a British judge, Member of Parliament and a radical for the abolition of slavery and capital punishment. He served as Judge of the High Court of Admiralty from 1838 to 1867.
R v Baillie, also known as the Greenwich Hospital Case, was a 1778 prosecution of Thomas Baillie for criminal libel. The case initiated the legal career of Thomas Erskine. Baillie, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen, a facility for injured or pensioned off seamen, had noted irregularities and corruption in the hospital, which was formally run by the Earl of Sandwich. After his official reporting of the problems failed to bring about reform in the hospital, Baillie published a pamphlet that was critical of the hospital's officers, alleging that Sandwich had given appointments to pay off political debts; Sandwich ignored the pamphlet but ensured that Baillie was indicted for criminal libel. Baillie hired five barristers, including Erskine, then newly called to the Bar, and appeared before Lord Mansfield in the Court of King's Bench on 23 November 1778.
The Case of the Dean of St Asaph, formally R v Shipley, was the 1784 trial of William Davies Shipley, the Dean of St Asaph, for seditious libel. In the aftermath of the American War of Independence, electoral reform had become a substantial issue, and William Pitt the Younger attempted to bring a Bill before Parliament to reform the electoral system. In its support Shipley republished a pamphlet written by his brother-in-law, Sir William Jones, which noted the defects of the existing system and argued in support of Pitt's reforms. Thomas FitzMaurice, the brother of British Prime Minister Earl of Shelburne, reacted by indicting Shipley for seditious libel, a criminal offence which acted as "the government's chief weapon against criticism", since merely publishing something that an individual judge interpreted as libel was enough for a conviction; a jury was prohibited from deciding whether the material was actually libellous. The law was widely seen as unfair, and a Society for Constitutional Information was formed to pay Shipley's legal fees. With financial backing from the society Shipley was able to secure the services of Thomas Erskine KC as his barrister.
Sir John Silvester, 1st Baronet, was an English lawyer and Common Serjeant of London from 1790 to 1803, and Recorder of London from 1803 until his death in 1822.
Theodosia Trollope was an English poet, translator, and writer known also for her marriage into the Trollope family. She married and bought a villa in Florence, Italy with her husband, Thomas Adolphus Trollope. Her hospitality made her home the centre of British society in the city. Her writings in support of the Italian nationalists are credited with changing public opinions.
John Hostettler (1925-2018) was an English writer of legal histories and biographies.
