Four Prosecution Lawyers

Four lawyers from the Roger Casement prosecution team.   In 1916 Sir Roger Casement, for his role in the Easter Rising, was prosecuted for High Treason and was found guilty and sentenced to death.   This portrait of the four lawyers is taken from the great canvas by Sir John Lavery depicting the appeal hearing of Casement against his conviction for High Treason.   An image of the full painting appears below the text.

They are, clockwise from the junior counsel proffering the law book to his leader:

This is Archibald Bodkin.   The year after the trial he was knighted and became Sir Archibald Bodkin.   As a treasury devil, he earned high praise as a prosecution lawyer.  He also specialised in licensing law.   In 1920 he became Director of Public Prosecutions in which capacity he banned the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, saying that  “…I have not had the time, nor may I add the inclination to read through this book, I have, however, read pages 690 to 732 and it contains a great deal of unmitigated filth and obscenity”

To Bodkins right is G.A.H. Branson.   At the time of the trial, he was Director of Public Prosecutions and acted as Junior counsel to his leader F.E. Smith.   He subsequently became a High Court Judge and was knighted but his greatest claim to fame is that he was the grandfather of a certain Richard Branson on Virgin Airways.

Below Branson, the man with the mustache is Sir George Cave.    He is a King’s Counsel and also the serving Home Secretary in the Lloyd George’s coalition government.  He was later ennobled as Viscount Cave and became a Lord of Appeal and later Lord Chancellor of England.

Next to Cave is F.E. Smith:  He was a formidable lawyer. At the Bar, he became one of the best known and most highly paid barristers known to the law, earning over £10,000 per year before the First World War.   By the time of the trial he had been appointed Attorney General and had a seat in the cabinet.   Politically he was an avowed Orangeman and unionist, a close friend of Edward Carson and known as Carson’s galloper.  He became embroiled in the unionist gun-running which armed the Ulster volunteers.     He led the prosecution of Casement and in his capacity as Attorney General denied Casement the right to appeal the decision to the House of Lords.

He was subsequently ennobled as Lord Birkenhead and became Lord Chancellor of England