By HILARY GAVIN
GOOGLE the psychological act of compulsively washing your hands and AI will tell you it’s “a simple cleansing ritual to a coping mechanism for managing guilt or anxiety”.
As you’ve possibly gathered reading my blog by now, I love classical literature and, although I appreciate Charles Dickens isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, one of my favourite novels of all times is Great Expectations.
If you’ve not read it, give it a go – because every character in this 1861 novel is expertly drawn by Dickens; Pip, the lowly-born ambitious narrator, who is flawed but ultimately seeks moral justice; Miss Havisham, the elderly spinster consumed by seeking revenge for being jilted at the altar; Estella, the beauty who is mentored by Miss Havisham to wreak havoc on men; and the mysterious convict Abel Madgwitch, Pip’s benefactor.
I know not everyone will agree with me but I would say that Jaggers, or Mr Jaggers, who is Pip’s world-weary guardian and solicitor, is the most intriguing character in Dickens’ novel, which undoubtedly sought social justice in Victorian Britain.
As an A-level student studying in Chichester, West Sussex, I read Great Expectations and I was particularly struck by Dickens’ description of Mr Jaggers’ hand-washing ritual after court appearances or taking legal instructions.
Of course, Dickens uses Pip (Mr Philip Pirrip) as his narrator in Great Expectations and this extract below from Chapter XXVI of the novel taken from the Sparknotes.com website and describing Mr Jaggers illustrates my point:
“Come here, and I’ll take you home with me.” I embrace this opportunity of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a client from his room.”
I suspect the majority of us nowadays find the official J Arthur Rank advertising trailer of director David Lean’s 1946 movie adaptation of Great Expectations overdramatic and amusing – but I find it insightful.
It’s a pity the post-Second World War trailer doesn’t show Jaggers (Mr Jaggers) – portrayed masterfully by Francis L Sullivan – washing his hands as he does in the movie but introduces his character as “the pompous”.
This was the only description of the main protagonists in the movie that jarred with me in the trailer because, although the Dickens’ lawyer Jaggers appears to be pompous and arrogant, I would suggest his character adopts this stance to assume gravitas as he fights the ills of Victorian Britain in court.
There is, undoubtedly, a humane side to Mr Jaggers as he willing to take on Estella’s birth mother Molly as his maid and her real father and exiled convict Abel Madgwitch, as (spoiler alert) his client and Pip’s benefactor.
Of course, the kindly John Wemmick, who acts as Mr Jaggers’ trusted clerk, is privy to his employer’s real motives in court and in practice so I’ve always viewed Jaggers as a sympathetic character in the Dickens’ novel.
Although, I cannot say for certain what Charles Dickens really wanted to convey to his readers about the state of the courts of law in Victorian Britain, he was – as the 1946 J Arthur Rank trailer says “a great story-teller”.
I would argue that the trailer conveys the British public’s desire for a more egalitarian state after the horrors of the Second World War and their knee-jerk reaction to kick against pomposity in the old guard and ruling class.
Of course, Jaggers – the lawyer – could be viewed at this time in our nation’s history as one of the “old guard” in Britain fighting cases in court in front of seemingly outdated wig-wearing and gavel-wielding judges.
All this brings me on to the state of our Justice System in England and Wales today because I’m worried, indeed very worried that a dearth of talented court reporters sitting in on our Magistrates and Crown courts is wrecking society.
I say this after walking past Chichester Crown Court last Friday (June 13th, 2025) and briefly chatting with a court employee who told me a murder trial was being heard inside but it wasn’t being covered by either a court reporter or journalist from a local newspaper where the alleged crime took place.
Shameful! No other words needed here if this story is true.
Anyone who knows Chichester well is aware that its Crown Court in Southgate in the city is infamous for the “Redlands drugs party bust” trial when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards “faced justice” in 1967 amid a media frenzy in the Swinging Sixties.
But few of us living in and around the city today are aware that the Crown Court building was designed by architect Cecil George Stillman in 1940 and was built at a time when Britain appeared to be losing the Second World War.
My late mother was a schoolgirl during the war and she told both my sister and myself that she remembered seeing injured soldiers returning from Dunkirk at the city’s old Victorian railway station, now long gone.
I know not everyone will agree with me, but I’m rather fond of Chichester’s Crown Court building, with its Art Deco and Eastern influences, and the new airy glass fronted railway station built in 1961. I can’t say I feel the same way about the city’s Stagecoach bus station, though, but I’m sure someone can defend it as an example of Brutalism architecture.
Of course, I grew up in Chichester in the Sixties so I know Southgate, and its changing guises over the past 50 year, very well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t spare the time to go to Chichester Festival Theatre to see Redlands, the new play by Charlotte Jones that ran there last autumn, in which the trial at Chichester takes centrestage.
I’ve heard from a former boyfriend of mine that his uncle and his wife went because he was a rookie policeman in Chichester in the Sixties and he was involved in the Redlands drugs bust and I think he accompanied The Stones to trial.
And I’ve also heard that the actor Nigel Havers enjoyed the play, in which he apparently features as a teenager and aspiring actor holidaying nearby.
His late father Michael Havers QC was representing The Rolling Stones in court as a barrister under the old Quarter Sessions and Courts of Assize justice system that existed before Crown Courts were introduced in England and Wales in the 1970s.
Nigel’s father Michael Havers QC later went on to become Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and the Conservative Party was in power in Britain in the 1980s.
Now, I’ve also heard on the grapevine that Nigel Havers was at our city’s Crown Court recently, but I’ve no idea why because my local paper, The Chichester Observer, in its wisdom, doesn’t cover magistrates and crown courts anymore.
In my humble opinion, this is a travesty. Of course, The Chichester Observer has a court round-up listing cases and sentencing but there are no local journalists to write up the back stories and mitigating factors which led guilty defendants to commit crime.
As a result, the readers of the court round-up don’t get to know more about the defendants and, in my opinion, can be quick to act as judge and jury themselves by dehumanising them all as “a rum lot”. The mega-wealthy Rolling Stones have their story immortalised in print and on stage so why aren’t the less advantaged in society allowed to have their stories told? Why are they effectively gagged?
I’m going to finish writing now, but I should say that I have featured a studio photo of Mick Jagger as the main picture accompanying this article. I bought the photo in a bundle of rock ‘n’ roll photographs from the young man who used to run the Music Shop in Aldwick, near Bognor Regis, on the proviso that there were no copyright issues. Since then, I have tried unsuccessfully to track down the photographers but I have the feeling that the majority of these photos were promo pictures and so they can be published safely here on my WordPress site.
Saying that, if anyone knows who took this photo of Mick Jagger, please don’t hesitate to contact me to tell be the back story. I’d love to know.
By HILARY GAVIN
Copyright June 15th, 2025
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Hilary Gavin, Journalist & Writer, T/A Business ‘n’ Commas, Hunston, PO20 1NY
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