William Garrow - Legacy

Legacy

Garrow's estate was valued at £22,000 after his death near Ramsgate, Kent, including £12,000 in the Bank of England, £5,000 in three insurance policies and £5,000 secured by mortgages – a total of £1,558,000 in 2013 terms. Garrow's will was written in 1830 and contained only two demands; to be buried in his birthplace, Hadley, with his uncle, his father's younger brother William (who had left Garrow the best part of his fortune), and to set up a trust. The trust contained his entire estate, with the trustees being Leonard Smith, a merchant, Edward Lowth Badeley of Paper Buildings, Inner Temple and William Nanson Lettsom of Gray's Inn. The money was divided between Joseph, Garrow's nephew, who received £1,000, £200 to each of the children of Garrow's sister, £2,000 to the sister and £300 a year to the widow of Garrow's son. Eliza, Garrow's daughter, received £300 a year from the interest on the trust, with an additional provision of £200 for the joint use of Eliza and her husband. The estate was structured by a legal professional, and as such no death duties were paid. The second instruction was ignored: Garrow was buried in the churchyard of St Laurence, Ramsgate, his parish church.

Edward Foss described him as "one of the most successful advocates of his day", something linked more to his "extraordinary talent" at cross-examination than his knowledge of the law; Garrow once told a witness before a case that "you know a particular fact and wish to conceal it – I'll get it out of you!" Lord Brougham, who regularly opposed him in court, wrote that "no description can give the reader an adequate idea of this eminent practitioner's powers in thus dealing with a witness". Lemmings notes Garrow as not only a formidable advocate but also the "first lawyer to establish a reputation as a defence barrister".

Garrow was largely forgotten; although Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife discovered his work a generation later when reading transcripts of Old Bailey cases, there was little academic work on him until the late 20th century. In 1991, John Beattie published "Garrow for the Defence" in History Today, followed by "Scales of Justice: Defence Counsel and the English Criminal Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" in Law and History Review. Allyson May, who did her doctoral study under Beattie, further extended the analysis of Garrow's work with The Bar and the Old Bailey: 1750–1850, published in 2003.

Garrow's work was cited in court as recently as 1982, when the Supreme Court of Canada quoted a passage from The Trial of William Davidson and Richard Tidd for High Treason, where Garrow instructed the jury as to how to interpret testimony, in Vetrovec v The Queen in 1982. In 2006 he was again quoted, when the Irish Court of Criminal Appeal used the same work in their review of the 1982 conviction of Brian Meehan for the murder of Veronica Guerin.

In 2009, BBC One broadcast Garrow's Law, a four-part fictionalised drama of Garrow's beginnings at the Old Bailey, starring Andrew Buchan as Garrow. A second series, again of four parts, was aired in late 2010, and the third and final four-part series was broadcast in November and December 2011.