Henry Fielding Dickens - Legal Career

Legal Career

He attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge from 1868, graduating BA in Mathematics (29th Wrangler) in 1872 before studying Law at the university. Of that period at Cambridge, Dickens later wrote:

"Looking back now upon the years that are gone, I find that there are one or two scenes or incidents which arise with astonishing vividness to my mind that may be worth recording...I hope it will not be thought that I tell this story vaingloriously, as it was but a small matter so far as I was concerned. Nothing is farther from my thoughts. I do so because it is typical of a strange reticence on part, an intense dislike of 'letting himself go' in private life or of using language which might be deemed strained or over-effusive; though, as will be seen later, when he was deeply moved he was at no pains to hide the depth of his emotion. Thus it came about that, though his children knew he was devotedly attached to them, there was still a kind of reserve on his part which seemed occasionally to come as a cloud between us and which I never quite understood."

"In the year 1869, after I had been at college about a year, I was fortunate enough to gain one of the principal scholarships at Trinity Hall, Cambridge -- not a great thing, only 50 pounds a year; but I knew that this success, slight as it was, would give him intense pleasure, so I went to meet him at Higham Station upon his arrival from London to tell him of it. As he got out of the train I told him the news. He said, 'Capital! capital!' -- nothing more. Disappointed to find that he received the news apparently so lightly, I took my seat beside him in the pony carriage he was driving. Nothing more happened until we had got half-way to Gad's Hill, when he broke down completely. Turning towards me with tears in his eyes and giving me a warm grip of the hand, he said, 'God bless you, my boy; God bless you!' That pressure of the hand I can feel now as distinctly as I felt it then, and it will remain as strong and real until the day of my death."

In 1873 he was called to the Bar, and in 1892 he was appointed Queen's Counsel. In 1899 he became a Bencher of the Inner Temple. Sir Henry's best recalled case was his defence of Kitty Byron for the murder of her lover in 1902. Although she was convicted, Dickens's defence was so spirited that she was given a reduced prison sentence due to public petition.

For some years he was the Recorder for Deal and Maidstone in Kent. His interests included fencing, and he was the first President of the Chatham Yachting Club. He succeeded Sir Frederick Albert Bosanquet as Common Serjeant of London in November 1917, an ancient office first recorded in 1291 with the appointment of Thomas Juvenal, and the second most senior judicial position at the Old Bailey after the Recorder of London. As Common Serjeant Dickens judged criminal trials at the Old Bailey for over 15 years, retiring on October 18, 1932. He was succeeded by Cecil Whiteley KC.

On one occasion Dickens was judging a case when the male prisoner interrupted him by saying "You ain't a patch on your father." "I quite agree with you. What do you know of my father?" Dickens replied. The prisoner, who had spent most of his life in prison, answered "Well, I have read some in prison." "Have you?", Dickens replied, "that's capital; for you will now have eighteen months in which to resume your studies." He repeatedly refused nominations for election to Parliament, believing it would adversely affect his legal practice.