Sir Patrick Gardiner Hastings (17 March 1880 – 26 February 1952) was an English barrister and politician noted for his long and highly successful career as a barrister and his short stint as Attorney General. He was educated at Charterhouse School until 1896, when his family moved to continental Europe. There he learnt to shoot and ride horses, allowing him to join the Suffolk Imperial Yeomanry during the Second Boer War. After demobilisation he worked briefly as an apprentice to an engineer in Wales before moving to London to become a barrister. Hastings joined the Middle Temple as a student on 4 November 1901, and after two years of saving money for the call to the bar he qualified as a barrister on 15 June 1904.
Hastings first rose to prominence as a result of the Case of the Hooded Man in 1912, and became noted for his skill at cross-examination. After his success in Gruban v Booth in 1917, his practice steadily grew, and in 1919 he became a King's Counsel (KC). Following various successes as a KC in cases such as Sievier v Wootton and Russell v Russell, his practice was put on hold in 1922 when he was returned as the Labour Member of Parliament for Wallsend in Northumberland. Hastings was appointed Attorney General for England and Wales in 1924, by the first Labour government, and knighted. His authorisation of the prosecution of J. R. Campbell in what became known as the Campbell Case, however, led to the fall of the government after less than a year in power.
Following his resignation in 1926 to allow Margaret Bondfield to take a seat in Parliament, Hastings returned to his work as a barrister, and was even more successful than before his entry into the House of Commons. His cases included the Savidge Inquiry and the Royal Mail Case, and before his full retirement in 1948 he was one of the highest paid barristers at the English bar. As well as his legal work, Hastings also tried writing plays. Although these had a mixed reception, The River was made into a silent film in 1927 named The Notorious Lady. Following strokes in 1948 and 1949, his activities became heavily restricted, and he died at home on 26 February 1952.
Early life
Hastings was born on 17 March 1880 in London to Alfred Gardiner Hastings and Kate Comyns Carr, a pre-Raphaelite painter and the sister of J. Comyns Carr. Having been born on Saint Patrick's Day Hastings was named after the saint.Hyde (1960) p. 4 His father was a solicitor with "somewhat seedy clients",Hyde (1960) p. 6 and the family were repeatedly bankrupted. Despite financial difficulties, there was enough money in the family to send Hastings to a private preparatory school in 1890 and to Charterhouse School in 1894.Hyde (1960) p. 8 Hastings disliked school, saying "I hated the bell which drove us up in the morning, I hated the masters; above all I hated the work, which never interested me in the slightest degree". He was bullied at both the preparatory school and at Charterhouse, and did not excel at either sports or his studies.
By 1896 the family hit another period of financial trouble, and Hastings left Charterhouse to move to continental Europe with his mother and older brother Archie until there was enough money for the family to return to London. The family initially moved to Ajaccio in Corsica, where they bought several old guns and taught Hastings and his brother how to shoot.Hyde (1960) p. 9 After six months in Ajaccio the family moved again, this time to the Ardennes, where they also learnt how to fish and ride horses.Hyde (1960) p. 10
While they were in the Ardennes, Hastings and his brother were arrested and briefly held for murder. While attending a fête in a nearby village Archie got into a disagreement with the local priest, who accused him of insulting the French church after misunderstanding one of his comments. The brothers returned to see the priest the next day to demand an apology. On their way home after receiving it, they were stopped by two gendarmes who arrested them for murder, informing them that the priest had been found dead ten minutes after they left. As the gendarmes prepared to take the Hastings to the police station, two more officers turned up with a villager in handcuffs. It transpired that the priest had been having an affair with the villager's sister, and after waiting for the Hastingses to leave he had killed the priest with a brick. The brothers were quickly released.
Soon after this incident, the family moved from the Ardennes to Brussels after a message from their father that the financial problems had ended. When they reached Brussels they found that the situation had actually worsened, and the family moved between cheap hotels, each one worse than the one before.Hyde (1960) p. 11 Desperate for a job, Hastings accepted an apprenticeship with an English engineer who claimed to have made a machine to extract gold in North Wales. After about a year and a half of work they discovered that there was no gold to be found in that part of Wales, and Hastings was informed that his services would no longer be needed.
Military service and call to the bar
Hastings left the failed mining operation in 1899, and travelled to London.Hyde (1960) p. 12 Just after he arrived, the Second Boer War broke out, and the British government called for volunteers to join an expeditionary force. The only qualifications required were that the recruit could ride and shoot, and Hastings immediately applied to join the Suffolk Imperial Yeomanry. He was accepted, and after two weeks of training the regiment were given horses and boarded the S.S. Goth Castle to South Africa.Hastings (1950) p. 33 The ship reached Cape Town after three weeks, and the regiment disembarked. Their horses were considered too weak to be ridden, and so they were discharged and either put down or given to other soldiers.Hastings (1950) p. 38 Hastings did not enjoy his time in the army; the weather was poor,Hastings (1950) p. 40 the orders given were confusing and they were provided with minimal equipment.Hastings (1950) p. 41
Hastings was made a scout, a duty he thoroughly enjoyed; it meant that he got to the targeted farms first, and had time to steal chickens and other food before the Royal Military Police arrived (as looting was a criminal offence).Hastings (1950) p. 43 Hastings was not a model soldier; as well as looting, he estimated that by the time he left the army he had "been charged and tried upon almost every offence known to military law".Hastings (1950) p. 49 After two years of fighting, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in 1902, bringing an end to the Second Boer War, and his regiment was returned to London and demobilised.Hastings (1950) p. 50
By the time Hastings returned, he had decided to become a barrister.Hyde (1960) p. 16 There were various problems with this aim: in particular, he had no money, and the training for barristers was extremely expensive. Despite this, he refused to consider a change of career, and joined the Middle Temple as a student on 4 November 1901. It is uncertain why he chose this particular Inn of Court (his uncle J. Comyns Carr, his only connection with the bar, was a member of the Inner Temple), but the most likely explanation was that the Middle Temple was popular with Irish barristers, and Hastings was of Irish ancestry. The examinations required to become a barrister were not particularly difficult or expensive, but once a student passed all the exams he would be expected to pay the then-enormous sum of £100 (equivalent to approximately £ in 2015) when he was called to the bar and Hastings was literally penniless.
As soon as he joined the Middle Temple, Hastings began saving money for his call to the bar, starting with half a crown from the sale of his Queen's South Africa Medal to a pawnbroker.Hyde (1960) p. 17 The rules and regulations of the Inns of Court meant that a student was not allowed to work as a "tradesperson" but there was no rule against working as a journalist, and his cousin Philip Carr, a drama critic for the Daily News, got him a job writing a gossip column for the News for one pound a week. This job lasted about three months; both he and Carr were fired after Hastings wrote a piece for the paper that should have been done by Carr. Despite this, his new contacts within journalism allowed him to get temporary jobs writing play reviews for the Pall Mall Gazette and the Ladies' Field. After two years of working eighteen-hour days he had saved £60 of the £100 needed to be called to the bar, but had still not studied for the examinations as he could not afford to buy any law books.Hyde (1960) p. 18 Over the next year his income decreased, as he was forced to study for the examinations rather than work for newspapers. By the end of May 1904 he had the £100 needed, and he was called to the bar on 15 June.
Career as a barrister
At the time, there was no organised way for a new barrister to find a pupil master or set of barristers' chambers, and in addition the barrister would be expected to pay the pupil master between 50 and 100 guineas (equivalent to between £ and £ in 2015). This was out of the question for Hastings; thanks to the cost of his call to the bar, he was so poor that his wig and robes had to be bought on credit. Instead he wandered around Middle Temple and by chance ran into Frederick Corbet, the only practising barrister he knew. After Hastings explained his situation, Corbet offered him a place in his set of chambers, which Hastings immediately accepted.Hyde (1960) p. 20 Although he now had a place in chambers, Hastings had no way of getting a pupillage (Corbet dealt only with Privy Council cases) and he instead decided to teach himself by watching cases at the Royal Courts of Justice.Hyde (1960) p. 21 Hastings was lucky: the first case he saw involved Rufus Isaacs, Henry Duke and Edward Carson, three of the most distinguished English barristers of the early 20th century. For the next six weeks until the court vacation, Hastings followed these three barristers from court to court "like a faithful hound".Hastings (1950) p. 84
Finding a tenancy
At the start of the court vacation in August 1904, Hastings decided that it would be best to find a tenancy in a more prestigious set of chambers; Corbet dealt with only two or three cases a year, and solicitors were unlikely to give briefs to a barrister of whom they had never heard. The set of chambers below Corbet's was run by Charles Gill, a well-respected barrister. Hastings would be able to improve his career through an association with Gill, but Gill did not actually know Hastings and had no reason to offer him a place in his chambers. Hastings decided he would spend the court vacation writing a law book, and introduce himself to Gill by asking if he would mind having the book dedicated to him. Hastings wrote the book on the subject of the law relating to money-lending, something he knew very little about. He got around this by including large extracts from the judgements in cases related to money-lending, which increased the size of the book and reduced how much he would actually have to write.Hyde (1960) p. 23