Richard Muir

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Richard David Muir (1857-1924) was a prosecutor for the British Crown, widely regarded as the greatest of his time; he played a prominent role in many of the most sensational trials of the early part of the 20th century, most notably that of Hawley Harvey Crippen.

Muir was born in Scotland, the son of a shipping broker from Greenock. He went to London with the intention of being a stage actor. However, after a period working as a parliamentary reporter for the The Times, he had foregone his earlier ambition and turned to law, eventually working for the Crown as a prosecutor. While he never "took silk" (that is, appointed as a Queen's Counsel), he represented the Crown in every trial of note in the Old Bailey from 1901 till his death.

Muir was known to be hard working with no apparent need for conviviality. He usually spent half the night preparing for his cases, making notations on small cards with colored pencils — one color for direct examination, one color for cross examination, and so on. So ubiquitous were those cards that came to be known as Muir's "playing cards". He was rightfully feared by his clerks and officers from Scotland Yard who gathered his evidence from him, for he asked the same thoroughness from them as from himself. He depended a lot from physical evidence, while giving eyewitness testimony little credence, except if it would bolster existing, more concrete evidence.

Such was his reputation for thoroughness and diligence that when Dr. Crippen learned that his prosecutor was Richard Muir, he remarked, "I wish it had been anybody else...I fear the worst."

Because he was never appointed as Queen's Counsel Muir was not eligible to become a judge of the King's Bench Division. He was, however, eligible to become a Recorder. Although he was passed over the position of Recorder of London, he was appointed as Recorder of Colchester by the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, in particular because of his work in the Edward Mylius libel case. He was a Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple and was conferred his knighthood in 1918.

Sir Richard married the former Mary Beatrice Leycester, and had a son who was also a barrister, who, however, died in November 4, 1918 of influenza. His son's death left him heartbroken. Muir himself died suddenly in January 1924 in his house in Camden House Court, Kensington and is interred in West Norwood Cemetery.

[edit] Further reading

Felstead, Sidney Theodore. Famous Criminals and their Trials: Intimate Revelations compiled from the papers of Sir Richard Muir. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926.