The Last of the Tiger

For the first time in his career he was five minutes late. Otherwise Rayner Goddard, 81, gave no sign that this day in court would be different from any other in his twelve years as Lord Chief Justice of England. With his crimson robe sweeping the ground, his luxuriant wig, as usual, just a trifle askew, he strode into the paneled courtroom one day last week, seated himself in his big leather chair, jotted a note or two with a tiny silver pencil, and after fumbling with his ever-precarious pince-nez motioned for the session to begin. He seemed oblivious to the unusually large crowd that jammed the galleries. He might want this to be a session like any other, but everyone knew it was his last.

Though the office, if not the title, of the Lord Chief Justice goes back to 1268, few of its occupants have become so much of a legend in their own lifetime as Rayner Goddard. Unlike one famed predecessor. Sir Edward Coke, he made no great contribution to English law, but his blunt style and sharp knowledge of the law made him one of the most feared and respected men in England. The son of a London solicitor who had heard law around the house since childhood, Goddard, after Oxford, once stood for Parliament as the "Purity Candidate" against a man who had been divorced. His defeat was so disastrous that he never dabbled in politics again. In 1923 he "took silk," i.e., became a King's Counsel. The next 20 years brought him a succession of judgeships, a knighthood and a lifetime peerage. In 1946 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice, the senior criminal judge of the land (salary: £10,000, and the "perk" of receiving 4½ yds. of cloth from the City of London Corporation each year.

Justice-in-a-Jiffy. A short, stocky man, who presided over every kind of case, from the unsuccessful libel suit brought by Harold Laski against the paper that accused him of advocating violent revolution to the treason trial of Klaus Fuchs and the sensational cases of the "Chalk Pit Murder" and the "Vampire," he soon became known as the "Tiger." Green young barristers would sit up all night polishing their briefs before daring to appear before him in the morning and risk hearing him say, "Let's skip the rest and hear your last point, please." Even rich and famous lawyers, their names trailed by the initials of knighthood and honor, knew what it was like to be put in their place by Goddard. A quick and brilliant man, he was often impatient, earned for his court the nickname "justice-in-a-jiffy." In one hour last July, he disposed of six appeals. To one man contesting a magistrate's order, he snapped: "Go away. I simply don't know what all this is about." To another who insisted that he had been convicted under the wrong section of a municipal ordinance, he roared: "What section should you have been convicted under? I am sure you should have been convicted of something. Application dismissed."