Local Judges (2): Francis Oswald Langley (1884-1947)

First World War
Langley served throughout the war; he enlisted as a Lieutenant in the 1/6th Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment [right in 1916], serving on the front line, was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 and was promoted to Captain, and then Major, joining the Intelligence Staff; he was twice mentioned in dispatches, and was also awarded the Legion of Honour. During the war, Punch ran an anonymous feature 'The Watchdogs' by various writers, including Langley. In the words of one later commentator, he transmuted trench warfare into a laconic exchange of letters between one languid young officer, Henry, to another, Charles. The ghastly conditions in Flanders were again domesticated [as other writers had done]. The other ranks are portrayed as brave, cheeky children whose delight is to annoy the neighbours, some humourless Germans on the other side of a 'well known and highly-respected turnip field' ... Henry describes a sentry shouting 'gas!' then collapsing. The men blaze away at attackers who never come, one Tommy yelling 'Put another shilling in the meter, Allemand'.Tall tales were later told of braving 'black clouds and pungent smells'. But Henry can find no evidence of the emission of gas by the Germans; on the other hand, he asks Charles, what is to be made of the fact that the sentry, 'notoriously imprudent in his consumption of the Tinned Meat and Vegetable Ration', had that night 'excelled all his own previous efforts with the rich gravy'? Some of this material was included in the The War History of the Sixth Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment (Heinemann 1924).

Singapore
From 1921-23 Langley was a Law Officer in the Straits Settlements, living in Malaya with his wife and children. He drew on this time in later writings:

In 1944 he published a 62-page pamphlet Singapore to Shoreditch: A Sentimental Traveller from China in the Dock, based on a case which came before him involving a Chinese man accused of using insulting behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace; it had been described as a minor piece of propaganda (at a time when Britain was allied with China during World War II) to show that the Chinese are not so strange after all.

Midlands
On his return to England, Langley was appointed Recorder of Oswestry, and later as deputy stipendiary magistrate for Wolverhampton. (Before the war he had been a director of a Wolverhampton brewery, W Butler & Co.) He was also appointed Chancellor (an ecclesiastical judge: the bishop's senior legal officer, who holds 'consistory' courts and issues judgements on ecclesiastical matters) of the diocese of Lichfield. At this time they lived at Abbot's Lodge, Sibton, near Saxmundham in Suffolk - anciently a dower house for Sibton Abbey (a Cistertian house), rebuilt in the 18th century with various later additions, it was listed Grade II in 1951 [left].

In 1926, from Abbot's Lodge, from Brook's Club and from his chambers at 7 Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple (blitzed in 1940 - right) he wrote various letters to James Smyth & Son, Peasenhall, Suffolk, at first attempting to help them find new markets during the depression, but then turning into a bid for the company, which was rejected - details in Leslie Larnder Smyths of Peasenhall (2002). In that same year, he was appointed by the Ministry of Transport to hear appeals from bus proprietors against decisions of the joint committee set up to licence and control bus traffic between Barrow, Dalston and Ulverston, which were being developed to cope with increased demand (including the purchase of four 26-seater buses for the new coast road to Ulverston in the summer).

Metropolitan Magistrate
In 1932 Langley became a London police magistrate - and also the Chancellor of the diocese of Ripon. He sometimes sat at the Thames court, but mainly at Old Street. One case he heard there, in 1936, involved Victor Francis Leonard Kennedy, a 33-year old painter from Stepney who three times in the previous fifteen months had abandoned his wife and child (to whom the London County Council was paying 24s. a week). He claimed this was because he had been an NCO in the Foreign Legion, in charge of a prison containing four Englishmen who had returned to Britain and were after him; but since all but one had now left the country, he was prepared to pay the arrears, and was given three months to do so.

Graver issues arose that year with the rise of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts (ironically, Oswald was Langley's middle name) and their activities in East London; and in several cases he showed himself to be an uncritical supporter of police action while claiming - how convincingly? - that the courts were neutral on the issues of Fascism and Communism.

For example, when Detective Inspector Brunsden informed him that he would be seeking remands, he replied I wish to make it perfectly clear that I am entirely behind the police in any remedy they may ask for. And on another occasion that year he said at Old Street I want to make it clear that there are only two sides to this controversy — those charged to maintain the peace and those said to disturb it. Whether they are Communists or Fascists, or anything else, does not matter to this court. This mischief is getting beyond limits and more drastic steps may have to be taken.  (A fellow-magistrate, Mr Harris, at Thames police court said The very people who had been protesting against the Fascist procession on the ground that it would cause a disturbance form themselves into an anti-Fascist procession. That is what I cannot understand.)

Here is a fuller report of a 1936 incident:

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