The recent obituary of Sir Harry Ognall, criminal QC then High Court judge who played decisive roles in sensational cases of his era is well worth reading,
Here are a few extracts highlighting his connections with Leeds, high profile cases, and some anecdotes reminiscent of Rumpole of the Bailey
Sir Harry Ognall, who has died aged 87, was a prominent QC and High Court judge, and played a critical part in two of the most high-profile murder cases of his time. Ognall brilliantly interrogated a defence expert during the trial of Peter Sutcliffe, and was the judge in the Rachel Nickell murder trial.
One of three children, Harry Henry Ognall was born to middle-class Jewish parents in Salford on January 9 1934. His father, Leo, wrote detective fiction, publishing nearly 100 novels under the pseudonyms Hartley Howard and Harry Carmichael; his mother, Cecilia, was the child of Polish immigrants who had fled the pogroms and settled in Leeds.
Harry was educated at Leeds Grammar School. When he was 17 he and his father saw the headmaster to assess his chances of getting to Oxbridge. The headmaster said: “The reports I have suggest that your son has not learned a great deal, but that he has a talent amounting almost to genius for making what little he knows seem a good deal more.” Harry’s father concluded that this pointed to a career at the Bar.
Ognall was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1958. He did his pupillage at Vince’s chambers in Leeds and became a member of the North-Eastern Circuit, later recalling a divorce case in which the petition stated: “We were married on March 1 1961 and we separated on March 4 1961. During that time we gradually drifted apart.” On another occasion he represented a young man who was denying paternity of his girlfriend’s child. When the man admitted having sex with her on the sitting-room sofa after her parents had gone upstairs to bed, Ognall asked: “Did you take precautions?” “Yes, of course,” his client replied. “What precautions did you take?” “I wedged a chair under the sitting-room door-knob.”
His forte, however, would prove to be criminal work, and in the early 1960s he moved to chambers at 37 Park Square, Leeds, appearing for both prosecution and defence in many high-profile cases in the north-east.
Read the full obituary at
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/ ... decisive/