Shorthand to Record the Evidence It is proposed to hold a conference of police court magistrates and magistrates' clerks at Manchester to discover how police court procedure may be speeded up. The Manchester city justices are alive to the waste of time involved in taking down witnesses' depositions in long hand, and the suggestion has been favourably received that magistrates' clerks should take down the evidence in shorthand, and se save public money.
A striking example of saving that can be effected occurred in tke North of England recently. A big case of income-tax evasion was being tried. The Treasury Solicitor, not knowing that the magistrates' clerk was an efficient shorthand writer, ordered the court to be cleared of ordinary cases for a fortnight in order to cope with the mass of evidence. He was greatly surprised to find that th8 case lasted only eight! days owing to the swiftness with which the evidence was taken' down.
"The Magistrate," the bulletin of the Magistrates' Association, proposes that the clerk should, take down shorthand summaried of the evidence in the third per-sen. As each page of shorthand notes is completed, it should be taken by a messenger into an ad+ joining room and typed. By tha -time the last witness's evidenced was finished the evidence of thd earlier ones would be ready to be attested. This would save the time of the court, witnesses' time, witnesses' expenses, Witnesses' fees, counsels' fees, and cost of court upkeep. In the case quoted, it is estimated that the legal costs were reduced by more than 30 per cent. The method has been used for years with great success in Blackburn and in Newcastle.
It must be added that in 1914 the Lord Chief Justice, after a discussion with other judges, wrote that "their lordships were of opinion that it was undesirable to recommend any change."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.