Silent night (at the cinema)

Of all the exotic characters to emerge during the Five Nights trial, none was more exotic than Sir Montague Shearman.

Mr Justice Shearman

The trial concerned a silent film that was at that moment outraging half the country (see ‘Shocks on screen: the case of Five Nights’, NLJ, 28 October 2022, p22), and Mr Justice Shearman, to give him his full title, was the presiding judge.

Born two decades into Queen Victoria’s reign, the son of a solicitor from Wimbledon, he went on to earn a ‘double-first’ degree from Oxford University. And though the men associated with the film included one who used a whip on his rivals, and another who would be sued by Charlie Chaplin, none of them would ever hold a candle to him.

‘Tont’ Shearman boxed and rowed, ran the 100 yards in barely ten seconds, and helped himself to a rugby