OBIT FOR HHJ PIGOT , QC , COMMON SERJEANT.
HIS HONOUR THOMAS PIGOT , QC , COMMON SERJEANT OF THE OLD BAILEY
24 Sep 1998 DAILY TELEGRAPH
The Common Serjeant is one of the judiciary's oldest positions, dating back to 1291; in terms of rank, the holder is the Old Bailey's second most senior judge after the Recorder of London.
Pigot's duties involved presiding over many of the most serious cases at the Old Bailey - including, the Jasmine Beckford trial in 1985. He was also responsible for accompanying the Lord Mayor on official duties and for all orphanages in the City.
Keenly interested in the history and traditions of the City of London, Pigot was well-suited to the ceremonial side of his work, and he loved meeting the vast range of people with whom his office brought him into contact.
As a judge he was calm, humane and scrupulously fair, and particularly patient and helpful with younger barristers. Counsel appreciated his ability to run a tight ship with an easy-going manner. His succinct judgments were upheld in glowing terms by both the Court of Appeal and House of Lords.
In addition to his court work and social engagements, Pigot's workload was substantially increased when he was appointed by the Home Secretary to head an advisory committee on child evidence in 1988.
The resulting Pigot Report (1989) broke new ground in recommending that child victims of sexual and violent abuse need no longer give evidence in court, but could do so instead by use of video recordings. His recommendations, which became law shortly afterwards, led to Childline's Esther Rantzen declaring him her "Man of the Decade".
A lifelong, staunch Lancastrian, Thomas Herbert Pigot was born on May 19 1921 at Wigan, where his father was company secretary at a cotton mill and his mother a teacher. He won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School, and later to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he took a First in Jurisprudence in 1941. A highly talented all-round sportsman, he played rugby for Oxford.
After training at Sandhurst, he was commissioned in the Welch Regiment (which he chose for its prowess at rugby) in 1942. He later transferred to the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment and saw action in North Africa.
He was wounded in the thigh and taken prisoner by the Italians in Tunisia. After several months in hospital in Italy, he spent two years as a prisoner of war - the last six months near Dachau, having been handed over to the Germans.
After the war, Pigot resumed his studies at Oxford, receiving a BCL in 1947, and was then called to the Bar by Inner Temple. After pupillage in London, he joined Brabin Chambers in Liverpool in 1949, where he specialised in criminal and planning law.
Sport continued to take up much of his spare time. He played rugby for Waterloo and Harlequins, and for Wigan's professional Rugby League team under the somewhat unsubtle alias "A N Other". He was also a keen cricketer.
When Pigot took Silk in 1967, he joined chambers in the Temple at 2 Pump Court, of which he eventually became head.
Appointed a Circuit judge in 1972, he sat initially at Liverpool, where his ability to speak fluent Scouse surprised defendants. He later moved to Reading, before he was appointed Common Serjeant in 1984.
Later that year, Pigot imposed a nine-month jail sentence on the crime writer Helen Hough for helping a frail, deaf and near-blind 83-year-old friend to take her own life - a sentence upheld in the Court of Appeal as "undoubtedly correct".
The next year he presided over the distressing case of Jasmine Beckford, the four-year-old girl tortured and battered to death by her stepfather. Pigot sentenced Maurice Beckford to 10 years' imprisonment for manslaughter, after criticising Brent social workers for "naivety beyond belief".
Later that year he presided at the so-called "Lady in the Lake" trial, involving an airline pilot who strangled his unfaithful wife and dumped her body in Wast Water, Cumbria. The man was found not guilty of murder on the grounds of provocation, but guilty of manslaughter. He was sentenced by Pigot to four years.
The next year Pigot gave six life sentences to a sinister travelling conman known as "Dr Death", whose potentially lethal cocktails knocked out elderly women, allowing him to rob them.
He also presided over an unusual case in which a man who had dreamt he was fighting Japanese soldiers and woke to find his wife dead beside him was cleared of both murder and manslaughter on the grounds of temporary insanity.
In 1987, Pigot took the then unprecedented step of allowing five child witnesses in a sex abuse case to give evidence from behind a 7ft-high screen, shielding them from their alleged attackers. "The courts must do what they can to protect young witnesses who are giving evidence," said Pigot. "[It] has a duty to reduce the distress and fear they may experience."
For 20 years, Pigot made several trips each year to the Sovereign Base Area, Cyprus, first as the Deputy Senior (non-resident) Judge, then from 1984 until 1990 as Senior Judge.
Shortly after completing his report on child evidence - which he managed with hardly any secretarial assistance - Pigot suffered a stroke and took early retirement.
His main interests in later life were golf - he was a member of the Royal Birkdale and Huntercombe clubs - and his extensive library; he was a voracious reader, particularly of history. When he could no longer participate in sport, he watched it avidly on television.
He married, in 1950, Zena Wall; they had three daughters.
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