2 minute read
Review: The Streets and Voices of Greyfriars
LEGAL LEICESTER: THE STREETS AND VOICES OF GREYFRIARS.
When this reviewer came to Leicester in 1969 the local Solicitors` profession was almost exclusively concentrated in the Greyfriars area of the City. It consisted on the whole of small general practice firms, often bound together by ties of kinship and friendship, and it was entirely white male led. What a difference the last fifty years or so have made! While a few old style practices still cling to the traditional location, commercial work is now the domain of incoming national and regional large firms dispersed throughout the city and its environs in modern office blocks, while we find a considerable number of specialist niche practices often female and or ethnically minority led, many of whom cluster in the area of De Montfort Street. Hardly ever has the maxim “Get big, get niche or get out” been more graphically illustrated.
Iain Jones and Jane Kennedy have put together their archaeological, anthropological and legal skills to trace this development. They ask why the local profession centred itself in the Greyfriars area in the late 18th Century, why it grew and developed there in the 19th and the first part of the 20th Centuries and why it has quite rapidly changed form and location within the last forty years or so. To do this they have used various techniques including mapping and the Oral History method of interviewing those who have lived though the period of change. Thus much of the text is the testimony of Solicitors and their staff, mostly now retired, who attest to the changing pattern of practice, while at the same time giving us humorous sideways glimpses into the incidents of practice such as the ghostly goings on in New Street!
Overall this is a highly readable and informative study, and it is somewhat embarrassing to point to faults. However, it must be said that the proof reading leaves something to be desired in places, in particular with regard to the spelling of certain names and titles. In addition there is that old error which this academic pedant finds annoying: “it`s” when what is meant is “its.” “It`s” means “It is.” How often I had to correct that in students’ essays! There is also a factual error which involved me. When in 1980 the Leicestershire Law Society moved its library into the Harry Peach Room in the Law Faculty building at Leicester University I had a particular job of moving the existing collection around to find space: a dusty and thirsty task! Sadly despite what the authors say the collection only stayed for a few years before it was sold and carted off to London, leaving me with the equally dusty and thirsty task of rearranging the remaining books to fill the shelves. We had to say farewell to titles such as “Oliphant’s Law of Horses” and the inappropriately titled “The International Law of Peace, 1939 Edition!”
These comments apart, it must still be said that this is a useful contribution to local legal and historical studies as it places in our City’s context the social and economic forces which have so altered the form, location and nature of legal practice.
The book costs £7.50 per copy and should be available from the authors, though Past President Christl Hughes has a few for sale. Net sale proceeds will be given to The Solicitors’ Charity (formerly known as the Solicitors’ Benevolent Association.)
