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23 September 2022 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7995 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Every Man’s Own Lawyer

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Nicholas Dobson pays tribute to an ‘excellently concise compendium’ of English law in the early 20th century

Our present is built upon our past. And while we may not like the looks of where we’ve come from, our history is nevertheless a fundamental part of who we are now. However, as the famous opening of L P Hartley’s novel The Go Between remarked: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ A glance at a legal self-help manual from 1908 would confirm. For the 45th edition of Every Man’s Own Lawyer (EMOL) (coyly authored by A Barrister), in describing the laws of the day, starkly illustrates how social mores have changed.

For example, on the punishment of traitors, EMOL tells us that: ‘Up to a few years ago—until as recently as 1870 [the year that Charles Dickens died]—the punishment of a convicted traitor was that he be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution; be hanged by the neck until dead; and that his head be then

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