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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
For over forty years, criminal defence solicitor Henry Milner has been the go-to lawyer for some of Britain's most notorious and high-profile criminals – from Kenneth Noye and the Brink's-Mat robbers to gangster Freddie Foreman, John 'Goldfinger' Palmer and the gang who carried out the Millennium Dome raid. These and many others who reached serious misunderstandings with the law knew that once they were nicked, there was only one man to call: a genial cigar-smoking solicitor with an office tucked away in a leafy corner of central London, a man known to the Sunday Times as 'The Mr Big of Criminal Briefs'. In this remarkable memoir, Milner gives a real insight into the life of a top London criminal lawyer and into the mind of his clients, along the way introducing us to some of the most colourful characters ever to appear on either side of the dock. By turns shocking and hilarious, No Lawyers in Heaven gives a wry commentary on the frailty of human nature across the spectrum of the criminal justice system in a punchy narrative that could grace the pages of a bestselling crime novel.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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No Lawyers in Heaven
A Life Defending Serious Crime
Henry Milner
v
To my parents and grandmother, who gave me my backbone in life, and to my wife and two kids, who made sure I didn’t lose it.
vi
vii
‘I defend my clients against legal guilt. Moral judgments I leave to the majestic vengeance of God.’
Edward Bennett Williams, legendary American trial lawyer
viii
Contents
Acknowledgements
To my very good friends Alick Glass, Tony Wollenberg and David Lederman QC for their unwavering support and guidance; and to my editor, Olivia Beattie, whose mad idea it was that I write this autobiography in the first place and who has put this book into shape.
To Lucy Stewardson, my copyeditor, whose suggestions and corrections were absolutely invaluable.
To all my family, who have had to suffer (often not in silence) my never-ending ramblings on the proposed title and contents.
To my PA, Olivia Hodgson, who has managed to retain her sanity despite having to retype each and every chapter countless times.
Finally, to the 4,000 clients over the years, who have provided me with the material for such rich pickings.xii
Preface
‘I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can for failure: try to please everybody all the time,’ incisively quipped renowned journalist Herbert Bayard Swope.
And so it is in crime. If judges, prosecutors, policemen and convicted clients were the gatekeepers of our admission to heaven, you’d have to search long and hard to find any defence lawyers there.
From the general public standpoint, defence lawyers are not top of the pops. A visit to their offices is rarely an elevating or comforting experience. Speaking for myself, I would rather sit in a dentist’s chair having root canal treatment.
Many, many years ago, when I was virtually a beginner, my boss instructed a barrister I personally loathed. If I had been shipwrecked on a desert island and he swam ashore, I would gladly have thrown myself into shark-infested waters rather than suffer his company. He was an arrogant Mr Know-All, dismissive of anyone else’s view (which he never asked for) and mean to boot. But in court he was dynamite. He has long passed on – southwards!xiv
No lawyers are angels; they are paid to fight your corner right or wrong. A client is looking for an acquittal, not a lecture on morality. If counsel happens to be a nasty bit of goods, so be it. After all, the client is playing for high stakes – his freedom. Such high stakes are not conducive to self-reflection. Frankly, in the cut and thrust of criminal litigation, there isn’t normally time. It is simply not a luxury afforded to those of us instructed to defend in serious crime. So, after forty years playing the game, I’ve allowed myself a wider look at the world I have worked in.
This book is no intellectual treatise. Far from it. So if that’s what you’re looking for, may I politely suggest you seek refuge elsewhere. I have tried to make my story conversational, packed with what I hope you will find to be intriguing anecdotes spanning the career of a London criminal defence lawyer. I have concentrated on human nature, as opposed to a turgid recital of facts, precedents and an anxious parade of name dropping, which seem to be all too common a feature of legal autobiographies. My aim has been to home in on the eloquence of top defence barristers, the frailty of judges, the enigma of juries and, most importantly, the infinite variety of clients, who never cease to amaze me.
Somerset Maugham put it best when he said, xvA client’s infamy does not, of itself, guarantee an intriguing read, any more than his being a complete unknown disqualifies him from fascinating me when we meet. I am neither judge nor jury, but simply a curious observer from a privileged vantage point.
I would not cross the road to meet a president or a king … but I have journeyed a hundred leagues to see a missionary of whom I have heard a strange story and I have spent a fortnight in a vile hotel in order to improve my acquaintance with a billiard marker.*
So, here it is, hardly a self-confessed guilty man in sight – nor a truly innocent one. They all mingle in a vast shadowy expanse, reigned over by ever darkening grey skies stretching between righteousness and downright amorality. It is a country I have always thought of as being called Criminalia.xvi
* W. Somerset Maugham, In a Strange Land (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1924).
Chapter 1
Where Did It All Go Right?
‘You always pass failure on your way to success.’
Mickey Rooney
‘Milner – what are you still doing at this college?’
Good question.
‘You’ve been here two years and come bottom in Building Construction twice. You’re wasting your time here – you simply can’t draw. On the other hand, you’ve come top in Property Law in both years. So, I’m prepared to recommend you to any university to study law – but enough is enough.’
1967, I was standing in front of the principal at the College of Estate Management in Kensington. He had summoned me in to tell me his views.
‘Would you really, sir? Well, in that case I’d like you to recommend me to the London School of Economics.’ I’d heard rumours that LSE was a thinly disguised holiday camp and if after 2three blissful years you could spell your name right, you were bound to get a degree.
‘Very well, come in tomorrow morning and I’ll have a letter ready for you.’
I was living with my parents in Finchley and a friend from down the road had just finished his economics degree at LSE. The next day, I showed him the recommendation I’d picked up from the principal. The friend mentioned that he was going into college one last time to collect his old files that very day. He suggested I went with. It seemed pointless to me, as university began the following week and I knew it was far too late to apply. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and see the secretary for admissions – what’s there to lose?’
So I did. 4.30 that same afternoon found us knocking on the door of the secretary for admissions’ office at LSE. An Irish lady called Mary was in charge. My friend summarised my plight. Mary was unimpressed but very sympathetic.
‘Here’s the problem. The university year begins next week. The law course has only sixty places – it’s probably the best in the land. You haven’t had an interview, and no one gets onto the law course without an interview. There’s fifty-nine names on the list already and I know there’s a sixtieth who’s got to be added. He’s been interviewed and got three As. What did you get in your A Levels?’
‘Two Bs,’ I mumbled through my third shirt button.
Save for a deep sigh from Mary, silence reigned. The game appeared up. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Dr Valentine’s in charge of admissions. He’s gone off to a conference in chambers. He gets very 3ratty if I interrupt him.’ I just stood there – head bowed. ‘OK, I’ll give him a call so you can hear it for yourself.’
‘What on earth do you want? – I’m in the middle of a very important conference – I told you not to disturb me.’ I didn’t care for Dr Valentine.
‘Dr Valentine, I have a very nice young man here. He wants to come and study law.’
‘Good – tell him to apply next year.’
‘But he wants to start this year.’
‘I’m sure he does – so do hundreds of others who’ve applied. We start next week. Has he had an interview?’
‘No.’
‘Well the course is full, isn’t it? We only take sixty students.’
‘Dr Valentine, he’s got a very nice letter from the head of the College of Estate Management where he’s been for two years.’ She failed to add that I’d been wasting my time there.
‘Look, I’ve really got no time for this. If you’re so impressed with him have a look at the list, count it again. If there’s fifty-nine, take him – if there’s sixty, don’t. Don’t ring me again. Good day.’ She put the phone down and we turned to leave. ‘You’re in,’ she said with a broad smile.
We stopped dead in our tracks. Saying these words seemed to give her as much pleasure as my hearing them.
‘What’s happened to the fellow with the three As?’
‘He’s the sixty-first.’
I had just about enough sense not to ask whether this meant he was in or out.4
Chapter 2
Roots
‘A tree without roots is just a piece of wood.’
Marco Pierre White
I was born in the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital in the spring of ’47 – or so I’m told. Up to the age of one I lived with my parents, older sister and grandmother in Temple Fortune, north London. Then we moved to a bigger house nearby. I know it cost £8,000 as for years my father moaned about the fact that my mother stopped him from buying one in Bishop’s Avenue for £12,000 because she didn’t drive and there was no bus route on it.
My grandmother was Russian, my father Polish and my mother Belgian. My father had bribed his way to England on one of the last three boats to leave Ostend bound for Southampton before the Germans arrived in 1940 (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this book).
My first school was the Hasmonean Jewish Primary School in 6Hendon, where I had the good fortune to meet John Krieger – my oldest friend. We were both what is known as a couple of łobuzes (of Polish origin – meaning little rascals). Neither were we great scholars.
So, in the summer of 1956, at the age of nine, John was farmed out to Carmel College – a Jewish boarding school in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. His parents didn’t think I was a good influence on him and were desperate to get him away from me.
‘What’s it like there, John?’ I asked when he came home for half term.
‘Great – plenty of sport, no nagging and you get your own tuck box.’ Sounded good to me, so I started my own nagging with my parents and eventually we went there for an interview.
‘How many penny ha’penny stamps can you buy for a shilling?’ was the first question that the principal asked me.
‘Ten?’ I ventured, tentatively. Apparently this answer was close enough, particularly because I was a keen footballer and my parents could afford the exorbitant £100-a-term school fees. John’s mother was mortified to hear the news – I don’t think she ever really forgave my parents.
At the beginning of each term, the school train left Paddington at 3.40 p.m., with all the mothers standing huddled up in their fur coats on the platform sobbing like we were going off to war. When I arrived in September ’56 I could see that being a resident there was not quite the same as having been a tourist at my interview: a large, freezing dormitory, too many classes and a rabble of spoilt brats. We used to sleep with our clothes on for warmth and soon learnt the benefits of hospital corners on our 7skinny blankets. On the other hand, there was two shillings and sixpence pocket money a week and plenty of football.
I’ll never forget my first night there. I was awoken at about 3 a.m. to find the homesick kid in the next bed standing on it and screaming, ‘I want my mummy.’ This set us off, and within a couple of minutes we were all praying for parental care.
Within a few days another newcomer, Robert Rakison, who lived in the same street as me in London, could see how sad I was about sleeping in a dormitory with fifteen depressed insomniacs. He offered to swap dorms with me and off we went to the house master to ask for permission. The master stared at Robert like the true hero he was and said, ‘Well, well, what have we got here, Sydney Carton himself?!’ I never knew what he meant until I read A Tale of Two Cities a few years later, but to this day I’ve never forgotten what Robert did for me.
I suppose anyone stuck in a boarding school for nine years could tell an endless number of anecdotes. A few I remember with affection. The first XI football team used to have interschool matches every week or so. Our least favourite were against Oxford’s Salesian College. They had a centre forward like Roy of the Rovers and always murdered us. But our favourite were away to Mary Hare School. The tea was fantastic – a real spread, and we used to set about it as if we hadn’t eaten for days.
Unfortunately, our headmaster found out that amongst the delicacies they were serving up ham sandwiches, which is distinctly tref (unkosher), and that the trays on the away table had been cleaned out. He went potty and the entire team was summoned to his study. ‘Those of you who didn’t eat the ham 8sandwiches can leave now.’ No one budged – we’d all read The Three Musketeers (actually, I happened to be innocent). ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘it seems you’ve all learnt the meaning of loyalty if nothing else at this school.’ Then he went into a speech. ‘Some of you boys arrive here from a strictly orthodox background; others from a liberal Jewish background; and a good number of you don’t know the difference between an aleph and a swastika!’ (An aleph is the Hebrew equivalent to the letter A and has the grave misfortune to resemble a swastika.) ‘If it ever happens again, you’ll be on the first train out.’ I think he meant it. We never played away at Mary Hare again.
Sport played a large part in school and, frankly, I don’t know if I would have seen out my nine-year sentence without it. When I was seventeen the school entered a few of us into the county championships at Iffley Road, Oxford, considered hallowed ground because it was there, in 1954, that Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. I entered the high jump and won the event at 5ft 8 inches with a fine pair of Puma spikes, bought for my birthday by my grandma. The school also entered a team in the relay without much optimism. Jacques Koppel, my roommate, was to run the first 100 yards, me the second, Alan Shulman the 220 yards. But who was going to run the last leg – the dreaded 440 yards? There was a huge German boy at our school called Zybert (no one ever called him by his first name). He volunteered. He had never run 400 yards before, but what the hell. By the third changeover we were at least thirty yards down on the other five teams. But Zybert was quick and he set off like a cheetah to show us his worth. By the halfway mark he’d roared 9past all the opposition and was heading for eternal fame into the final bend. Sadly, it was there he started running on empty – in fact backwards, or so it seemed. His legs were sagging before our very eyes and he came in almost walking as a comfortable last. How we laughed.
Like all schoolboys, I remember the teachers with mixed feelings, but one I really liked was Mr Hobson. He was a terrific bat, a pretty good squash player and taught English – for at least half the lesson. The rest of the time he would regale us with his life at Oxford and the facts of life. He didn’t mince his words either. In my last school report he wrote: ‘Henry sits at the back of the class showing as much interest as a lump of suet.’ I’ve still got the report to prove it. He hated the use of verbose language and would mark in the columns of our essays in heavy print the letters A. P. K. every time an unnecessarily fancy word was used – Anxious Parade of Knowledge!
But he was very affable outside class. Think of Robert Shaw in Jaws and you have him to a T. One day he came into my study when Bob Dylan’s ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’ was blasting out on my record player. Dylan was just getting started then. The Animals had stolen ‘House of the Rising Sun’ from his first album and this was what had driven us to him. A few of us had had our own mini Dylan craze already. ‘That boy will go far, Milner – unlike you, he’s a poet.’
In our last English lesson, whilst we were whiling away the time after our A Levels, he waltzed into class and the first thing he said was: ‘Why does America have the best heavyweight boxers in the world?’10
No one had a clue. ‘Because it’s got a larger population than anywhere else?’ I offered.
‘No – it’s because there’s no welfare state in America.’ It took me at least ten years to get the point. Mr Hobson drank too much and always said what he thought, but he gave me a real education – I liked him a lot.
We also had a careers master called Dr Schmidt. He taught economics and German but considered himself to be a shrewd judge of character. We used to joke that his advice had ruined more lives than Al Capone. It was him who parked me off to the College of Estate Management. A little failure never hurt anyone. He must have been very far-sighted.
Chapter 3
Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon
‘Lazybones loafin’ all the day How you ’spect to make a dime that way?’
Hoagy Carmichael
Whenever I think back on my three years at the London School of Economics, I hear ringing in my ears the Kinks singing ‘lazing on a sunny afternoon’. That is what life was like there. Nothing moved at pace – except the re-raise at the poker games with the rich Persian students. You ambled in at about 11.30 and then straight down to Florrie’s bar for a coffee and game of table football. By lunchtime, the five-card stud poker game was up and running (Texas hold ’em was not yet in fashion). Tutorials and lectures came in a poor second, and to be seen in the vicinity of the law library was verboten.
Lazy days drifted into lazier evenings, and we passed the time in Earl’s Court Road at Ann’s flat. She was our second mother 12and terrific company. She made wonderful puddings whilst we listened to the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Rush and Dave Van Ronk on the record player. Saturday nights would often find us at the Bistro d’Agran in Knightsbridge, sadly since demised – always a great evening. You bought your own wine at the Loose Box down the road and had to sit at a table with another couple, whom you had never set eyes on before, whilst the live accordion player serenaded you with all the old French classics. No meal could ever cost more than £2 eight shillings, whatever you ate – an important factor in those days, when you lived on a measly grant and the fall of the cards. Regrettably, things changed a month before the annual exams, but as soon as they were over the rot set in again.
In my first year I moved out from home for a while and rented a flat in Belsize Park together with two American students and an old pal from my boarding school days. Twenty-eight shillings a week rent – high ceilings and no heating. That Christmas I arranged a party and had carefully selected twenty-one girls and twenty boys – with no gatecrashers to be admitted under any circumstances. In the first few months at LSE I’d become pally with Tony Wollenberg, also studying law. His mother didn’t think I was a good influence on her son either, and she was right. Tony was a very popular character – he had friends everywhere. So I said to him, ‘Listen here, Tony boy, I’m having a party and you’re invited, but I don’t want any of your shmock friends turning up to lower the odds. I won’t let them in – the balance is perfect – understand?’
I remember that Saturday night as if it were yesterday. There 13was thick snow falling and the flat was freezing. But the Rolling Stones were pumping out of the record player – ‘Route 66’ and such. There were cases of lager all around, together with a few bottles of disgusting Mateus Rosé.
At 9 p.m. the doorbell rang. ‘Hello, I’m a friend of Tony’s. He said it would be okay for me to come.’
‘Did he just? Well, it’s not!’ I replied and slammed the door.
Ten minutes later the doorbell rang again and after that a third gatecrasher – same response from me. Finally, at about 9.30 p.m., the man himself arrived – convivial as ever. His three mates, not having taken no for an answer, all stood shivering in the wings. Tony pleaded their cause.
‘Let them in – they’re bloody freezing standing out here.’
‘Not my problem, Tony. I told you not to invite anybody.’
The debate dragged on and finally came his ultimatum: ‘Well, if they’re not coming in – I’m not either.’
‘Fine by me,’ and I slammed the door yet again.
We didn’t speak for about a month afterwards but then we became lifelong friends. Actually, and it irks me to say it, I always respected him for what he did. The moral of the story? If you want to make a friend for life – kick off with a really good row.
I made another lifelong friend at LSE – Ian Camlett. He was studying, or rather not studying, economics. He easily had the best sense of humour in the college and a laissez faire attitude. He was somewhat fatter then, with an unenviable waistline but delectable touches of self-derision, such as: ‘I need three mirrors constructively placed to confirm what sex I am.’ He was also the table football king and a regular winner at the midday poker 14club, which earnt him the respect of his peers and more than his university grant, and which made him the natural choice in his last year for president of the student’s union. At the hustings he sat there, not a care in the world, eating a banana. Later, having finished his degree and believing he was walking on water, he declared he was going to hitchhike to Spain. We all thought success had gone to his head and told him so, to which he replied that he would call us on his arrival. Three days later he rang me. ‘Where are you – Barcelona?’ I enquired. ‘No, taking a bus home. I’ve been twenty-four hours on the north circular – can’t hitch a ride.’
So, after his failure at hitchhiking, which he attributed to the reality that he had neither the legs of Claudette Colbert nor the looks of Clark Gable, I borrowed my mother’s two-tone Cortina and off we went to Sitges in Spain to try out our charms on the beaches. We rented a flat for £1 a day each but, after five days, we were virtually potless, save for petrol money. On our return, we stopped off in Paris to visit the top of the Eiffel Tower for a cheap thrill. There was a street rotisserie roaring at the base and it was either crispy auburn chicken or a view – we couldn’t afford both. The heady aroma of garlic wafted towards us through the midday summer breeze as our stomachs rumbled – no contest.
Years later, Ian married and moved to Australia. I don’t think he hitchhiked there. He returns to visit old friends and family every few years, and so we feel obliged to organise a reunion poker game to ensure he can fly back home business class instead of economy.
My education, such as it was, didn’t finish at LSE. To qualify as a solicitor, you had to spend a further year at Lancaster Gate and 15sit the professional exams together with the flotsam and jetsam who were trying to qualify via work experience. The course was a nightmare. Sitting in an armchair with a lager in hand pontificating the pros and cons of the jury system wasn’t on the menu. You actually had to know what Act and which section – outrageous. Worse still, I was thrown out of the college one day due to an incident in the commercial law lecture. The tutor announced, ‘I’m going to spell the word “rescission” for you on the blackboard, so you all get it right – once and for all.’ Then in enormous capitals he started chalking it out. Never a fan of patronisation, I called out in a loud aside, ‘Three years at university – and now I’m attending a spelling class.’
I failed the exams and had to re-sit the accounts paper. So off I went to Aberystwyth for a four-day crammer course with QB VII by Leon Uris for night-time company. On Thursday, the last day of the course, the tutor was busy on the blackboard, cramming it with credits and debits.
‘Milner, you look lost.’
‘I am.’
‘When did you get lost?’ he enquired earnestly.
‘About Monday afternoon.’ Appreciative laughter all around.
But the tutor had the last laugh. ‘Well, I’ve tried, but I can’t make a soufflé out of a flat omelette!’ Louder applause all around.
Not my finest moment. But hey, I qualified – finally.16
Chapter 4
And So to Work
‘The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary.’
Vidal Sassoon
Having belatedly finished all my exams, the day had arrived when I had to find two years of articles (now called an apprenticeship). In life there’s always another hill to climb. My first job lasted one and a half days and was with a huge firm in a depressing building in Holborn. I was put in the commercial department. ‘Milner – see that 5ft pile of papers propping up the corner over there? That’s a four-year High Court dispute between BP and Shell – they’re all over the shop – put them in chronological order, will you?’ I didn’t. After all, I was now an educated man. Instead, I went to see Netty Rolnick. She ran a legal employment agency and, according to trusted sources, was ace in finding homes for spoilt brats. She secured me an interview in Cork Street in the West End with Nathan Vengroff & Co., a one-man band with one secretary – ideal.18
‘Mr Vengroff, if I may ask, what sort of law do you practise?’
‘Mainly we defend.’
‘Defend? Defend who?’
‘We defend criminals.’
‘What, guilty ones as well?’ I was still very naïve.
‘Even guilty ones occasionally,’ he added with a smile. This sounded more like my line of country, and I was hired at £5 a week. A few years before this, you actually had to pay for your articles, although this was rather cold comfort.
Mr Vengroff was a short, dapper man with a fine head of hair, great judgement and the total respect of his clients. They were a motley crew mainly from Fulham and the East End, all apparently recommended by word-of-mouth. He seemed to have a thriving business, which was mainly down to his terrific young secretary, Ruth, who ran the whole show. There were no computers back then or in-house photocopiers, so no file was very thick, even in fraud cases.
I would say my new boss was in his mid-fifties. In his earlier life he’d actually qualified as a Rabbi, which I found to be somewhat incongruous with his now being a criminal lawyer. I can’t say he ever sat down with me to teach me anything, but I learnt a great deal in my two years there. He would always put clients at ease on their arrival by talking about something absolutely nothing to do with the case in hand, so the client might be persuaded that even lawyers have blood running through their veins.
He had a large cupboard where he kept all his old files and I spent many an hour flicking through them. I used to read 19the statements first without looking at the barrister’s handwritten verdict on the front of the brief. Then I would give my own verdict and check if it agreed with the jury’s. I can hardly recall finding anyone not guilty – burglars, murderers, safe crackers, pub fighters, long firm fraud artists – on what I read I convicted the lot. How I would often shake my head in disbelief on reading the barrister’s endorsement as to the actual verdict. There was one signature that cropped up a good deal under the words ‘not guilty’, scrawled on the back sheet with a fountain pen in huge writing – Victor Durand QC. ‘Mr Vengroff – how is it that Victor Durand never seems to lose a case?’ I asked.
‘When you meet him one day, you’ll find out yourself – he’s in a different league to all the rest.’
One entertaining incident during my training I remember well. Whilst my boss was putting away some files in the safe one night, his beautiful Italian silk tie had become trapped in the safe door. There he was on his knees unable to get it out or remove it from his neck. Ruth got out her scissors to solve the problem. ‘No!’ he shouted, ‘Get Wilkins on the phone, he’ll open the safe.’
Some forty minutes later, Wilkins, the safe cracker, arrived grinning from ear-to-ear at my boss’s embarrassment. He was laden with a well-worn box containing the tools of his trade. He’d seen the inside of every London prison and a fair number of London safes, but now he was to be put to the test. He had a typical cockney sense of humour and whilst he was getting to work he said, ‘I don’t need to put my gloves on today, do I, Mr Vengroff?’ Then, five minutes later, having opened the safe with a 20flourish, he peered in and said, ‘I never thought I’d see the inside of your safe, Mr Vengroff – got any money in there?’
Two years flew by. What’s more, by the end I was on £20 a week. To give you an idea of relative values back then, a good meal out for two with a bottle of wine would cost you about £5. A month before my two-year slot was up my boss called me in. Of course, I expected a junior partnership or at least a tip-top salary to stay on. I was offered £28 a week. I was deeply disappointed and decided I’d rather take my chances elsewhere. But we parted on good terms. I had had a fine apprenticeship.
Finding a job as a newly qualified lawyer was not a problem in those days. I went for an interview in Chelsea with a small firm that specialised in fashionable divorces. The owner only took me on because it tickled his fancy that my surname was the same as the street. I thought it would be interesting, and so it was for about a month. Then the law of diminishing returns set in and the novelty value disappeared. In my time there I heard stories of mental and physical cruelty that one would not believe could have happened in a civilised world. I could stand no more.
My last client there I remember well. ‘Mr Milner, I’ve come for a divorce,’ said a middle-aged lady of obvious wealth. My mind was already wandering and I wasn’t really listening. ‘Oh yes – whom do you want to divorce?’ I replied on autopilot, as if she had a choice. Undeterred, she continued, ‘Mr Milner, do you know what my husband did to me last night when he came home from his Pall Mall club?’ I did not. ‘I shouted at him for being drunk and stinking of perfume, so he took the dustbin and put it over my head to shut me up. No wonder I’ve been having 21an affair for the past six years.’ I nodded in silence, but I’ve never touched a divorce case since. You need to have patience and endless sympathy, and I’m afraid I fall short in both respects.
