Nirthern Circuit / Hanulton v Gibson, August 8, 1851 - Cumberland and Westmorland Newspaper Transcriptions

Nirthern Circuit / Hanulton v Gibson, August 8, 1851

NORTHERN CIRCUIT, Carlisle, Wednesday, August 6, 1851
Nisi Prius Court. (Before Mr. Justice WILLIAMS)

HANULTON V. GIBSON.

This was an action by a former editor of the CUMBERLAND PACKET, brought against the proprietor for the residue of a year's salary, he having been dismissed from his office at the expiration of three months.

The defendant pleaded, first, that he did not promise to pay him a year's salary; secondly, that he had been induced to engage him for a year by fraud. There were other pleas traversing other allegations in the declaration, and finally, a plea that the defendant had paid him all that was due to him.

MR. ATHERTON, Q.C., and MR. COWLING appeared for the plaintiff, and MR. SERJEANT WILKINS and MR. TEMPLE for the defendant.

It appeared from the opening of the learned counsel for the plaintiff that the plaintiff was now the editor of the CARMARTHEN JOURNAL, and that he had for many years been connected with various newspapers as editor and reporter.

The defendant was the proprietor of the CUMBERLAND PACKET, published at Whitehaven, and the present action was brought against him for the residue of a year's salary, which the plaintiff claimed, he having been dismissed from the editorship of that journal in April last year, after having been employed upon it for three months.

The defendant was in want of an editor in January, 1850, and he applied to a MR. NELSON, of Adam-street, Adelphi, in London, who kept a register of such appointments, and that person not having an editor on his books, advertised for one in a London newspaper, and obtained an answer from the defendant. The terms were arranged to be after the rate of 100 l. a year, and 10s. a week for every hundred that the plaintiff could increase the circulation of the newspaper. These terms appeared to have been accepted by MR. NELSON, but that agent wanting 7 l. 10s. commission from each party, which both refused to pay, the name of the newspaper was not given up to the plaintiff, nor the plaintiff's name and address to the defendant, and thus that negotiation was broken off by MR. NELSON to the great surprise of the defendant, as appeared from some of the letters put in, who thought from MR. NELSON's candid and obliging manner that he was really anxious to serve him.

By a mere accident, however, the plaintiff learned, through a gentleman connected with the press of Manchester, that the defendant wanted an editor, and wrote to him, and they then mutually learnt that they had been mutually seeking each other, and that they were each then most anxious to form that engagement, and enter into that contract which was the subject of the present action.

The letters of the plaintiff and defendant to each other, which were of considerable length, and in which they each spoke in no flattering terms of MR. NELSON, were read by the learned counsel. These letters, amidst a vast amount of verbiage, contained the agreement above set out, and in one of them, dated the 16th of January, 1850, the plaintiff spoke of himself as having "edited the CHELTENHAM JOURNAL, reported for the SUNDERLAND BEACON, edited the HULL PACKET, reported for the LEEDS INTELLIGENCER, edited the BATH POET, acted as a correspondent for the London and various literary journals," and then went on to describe himself as being "in the prime of life, being about 40, possessed of an excellent constitution, affable, and obliging."

Won by this description, the defendant engaged him at once. But three months afterwards, the plaintiff dismissed him on the alleged grounds of incompetency as an editor and reporter, and as unable to read proofs. For three months after this, the plaintiff had been kept out of employment, and had at last obtained a similar appointment as editor of the CARMARTHEN JOURNAL, at a less salary - the handsome remuneration of 80 l. a year. This the learned counsel for the plaintiff opened as laying grounds for appropriate damages.

Proof was then given by calling one of the clerks of the WHITEHAVEN HERALD that the plaintiff had acted in the capacity of editor and reporter for the CUMBERLAND PACKET; and the handwriting to the plaintiff's and defendant's letters forming the agreement was also proved. In this witnesses opinion a month's notice to quit was the proper notice for an editor.

Mr. Serjeant WILKINS objected to the letters being put in unless stamped.

One of the series had had a half-crown stamp placed upon it.

Mr. Serjeant WILKINS submitted that the 2s 6d stamp by the recent Stamp Act, was made applicable only to agreements requiring a 1 l. stamp under the old Stamp Act. But letters forming an agreement under the old statute required a 35s. stamp, and they were not referred to by the new act.

HIS LORDSHIP held that the privoso relating to letters in the old act was in mitigation that they should in no case require more than a 35s stamp, whatever the quantity of words they might contain. But if the present letters contained more than 1,050 words, they would require an additional stamp.

Mr. Serjeant WILKINS then objected that the words of the letters must be counted.

MR. COWLING said the defendant ought to be prepared with a witness who had counted the words, if he insisted that the single stamp was insufficient, and referred to a case in support of this position.

HIS LORDSHIP said he should admit the letter as evidence.

The letters were then put in. Those dismissing the plaintiff complained, in addition to general incompetency, that the plaintiff was unable to spell correctly, or write grammatically, or punctuate properly.

Evidence was then given that the ordinary period of engagement for an editor was 12 months.

This was the plaintiff's case.

Mr. Serjeant WILKINS, for the defendant, said the plaintiff had been demented to run into this action, as he should prove him to be utterly incompetent for the duties of either editor, reporter, or reader; and, whatever the result of the action, it must be disastrous for him. He would show, in support of the plea of fraud, that the plaintiff had made mis-representations, and stated falsehoods, by means of which he had obtained his engagement with the defendant; and he would exhibit to them specimens of the plaintiff's incompetency which would disgrace a Sunday-school child.

In one of the letters, the plaintiff stated that he had been five years editor of the HULL PACKET, and had raised its circulation from 500 to 1,500. He should prove that before the defendant left that paper, its circulation was only 250. He had also stated that he was a reporter on the LEEDS INTELLIGENCER. He should prove that he never was engaged in any capacity on that newspaper.

The learned serjeant then read a great number of instances of bad spelling and incorrect grammar from the letters put in, and from the manuscripts of the plaintiff sent to the printers of the defendant's newspaper, and also some scraps of Latin from printed paragraphs the plaintiff had written. One of these read "Scaviter in modo; fortiter in rea" , another read "Cum multis alias" .

The description which the plaintiff gave of his previous engagements and qualifications reminded him of Caleb Quotem's description of himself, -- "I am the village factotum, I bleed, and draw teeth; I can write leaders, grind paragraphs, draw up reports, and supply you with anything from a wheelbarrow down to a toothpick". (Laughter) Was there ever such a hash as that letter seen ? "The bear put his head out of the window, I cried, ' what no soap ! ' he died and she married the gardener." (Loud Laughter)

The learned sergeant then read portions of one or two of the leading articles written by the plaintiff. One began, "Thanks to the Chancellor there is not much difficulty in dissecting his sceme." Another began "From the unequievocable defeats of last week sustained by the free trade Ministry, time was when such defeats would have been followed by a resignation."

He wished the Ministry knew in whose hands their fate rested. These articles reminded him of a very witty little fellow, an Irishman, named DUNN, formerly on this circuit, whom he once met in the Strand laughing fit to burst. "Oh", said he, "by the holy Moses, I have just been meeting a gentleman that has been writing an article in the SUN against the aristocracy, and I have just been lending him eighteenpence to get his breeches out of pawn." (great laughter) The learned serjeant then read a great many other singular blunders from printed paragraphs written by the plaintiff. In one he spoke of a farmer who was "in possession of a half-bred yew" (ewe); in another "he hoped Sunday School teachers would devout their time"; in another he wrote about "a subjointed document just issued", &c. These errors gave the compositors great trouble in correcting the press, and the defendant, who for many years had edited his own paper and had only given up that occupation to avoid the labour of it, had been compelled to correct the plaintiff's manuscripts.

The plaintiff had gone down to him from London in a wretched condition, and the defendant had lent him money to make himself decent, and had regularly paid him his salary of 2 l. a week till he left him.

If he satisfied the jury of the plaintiff's incompetency, that he had obtained his engagement with the defendant by fraud and falsehood, and that nothing was owing to the plaintiff when he left for work done, the defendant had a right to dismiss him at a moment's notice, and he looked therefore for their verdict.
MR. R. H. GIBSON, the son of the defendant, was then called and produced quantities of the plaintiff's manuscripts, and pointed out the blunders read by the learned serjeant in his speech. On cross-examination it appeared that his father had had six editors in about 18 months for the CUMBERLAND PACKET, who had remained in that capacity from two to five months each. Of these some got into debt and ran away, the debts of others followed them, some had been turned away for incompetency, and one becasue he was "disobedient". (The examination of this witness occasioned some amusement from his constant provincial omission of the letter "h", which gave the learned counsel for the plaintiff opportunity of retort in reply).

The printer of the defendant's paper was then called to prove the trouble and expense occasioned by the plaintiff's bad "copy". This witness, speaking of the plaintiff, said, "He did not like his style."

A number of gentlemen employed in various capacities on different newspapers were called, who proved that when the plaintif, 25 years ago, was on the HULL PACKET, that paper circulated 270 copies, and never reached 500; that the plaintiff had never been employed on the LEEDS INTELLIGENCER in any capacity; that he had been discharged from the NOTTINGHAMSHIRE GUARDIAN as editor for incapacity; and that although it was possible for a person to be capable, and yet very negligent, yet that faults in spelling were not faults of negligence, and generally, that the "copy" produced was not such as a compentant editor would furnish.

This was the defendant's case.

MR. ATHERTON having replied, contended that many of the faults in the manuscript produced, were apparently faults of rapid and negligent writing in a bad hand, and that the plea of fraud was not substantiated, unless the jury believed that when the plaintiff represented himself to be competent, he believed that he was not so. Unless this plea were made out, there was no doubt that the plaintiff was entitled to their verdict for a year's salary.

HIS LORDSHIP having summed up,

The jury, after a short absence, found a verdict for the defendant.