Limericks crochetes Once a Bar Student in the fifties in London
Once a Bar Student in the fifties
Hoped to finish quickly his law studies:
Some students tipped him off
Pass-list clerk Good Enough
Will shift around marks for Five Guineas!
One late Singh Bar-at-Law, Seremban
Took finals with student Wei Ni Shan:
May nineteen-fifty six
Trinity exam fix:
Who was called to the Bar if not Shan?
Said Singh: “Week before results are known
At Council of Legal Sovereign Crown:
In open envelope
Put five guineas like dope:
Clerk will to refectory come down.”
Now Singh had booked his return passage
His fee reached clerk by special message:
“What! Only five guineas?”
Wei Ni Shan made much pleas.
“Once on Pass List give more to assuage!”
For decades choice invitee at bars
Was you know who: O! Do-good-er woes!
Look up or down: East-West
Never at him in jest:
Think: all the good he did to Yahoos!
Wei Ni Shan twice went to refectory
Early one morning at nine-thirty:
Saw West and East Indians
All shot-up onions:
Drop their envelopes in mail-rack tree!
Mister Do-Good-er was good enough
The hundreds of lives not to think of
All over Empire
Famished straits all dire
Waiting for Barrister to lift off !
Trust you, Monseigneur Don Ron, to say the right thing at the right moment. My Chinese name is Wei Ni Shan. I was already enrolled as a student of the Bar in London when I was teaching at 18/19 at the largest Chinese school in the Federation of Malaya and got through all the subjects at the Bar Exams through self-study, though I attended some lectures just before the Trinity Bar Finals in 1956. I checked and re-checked the "bribery system": the "five guineas" was an initial downpayment. Once the bribing candidate's name appeared in the national newspaper, the Times of London, of course the grateful Barrister-at-Law made it a point to shower the clerk in question with all sorts of gifts. I was assured the man was invited to the colonies and feted like a Prince. Incidentally, I was never called to the Bar!
Your point about it being the case in the States may be gleaned besides from the film, "Love Story" where Barrett (played by Ray Milland) attempted to "influence" his son's admission to the Harvard law faculty, etc., but hurray! Barrett IV made it on his own. Very moving film, I must say. Nice to hear from you. Wignesan
I had to laugh at your limerick story of bribery in the 50s. Apparently concocted by the British to send out inferior barristers to the former colonies as some kind of poison darts to poison the governments forming in those countries where the law had to be upheld and governments as free as possible from corruption. It worked and many former colonies fell into corruption from corrupt officials trained in England how to get ahead with a few guineas.
It's still happening today. Last year, some people in our law school at the University I worked at were convicted of taking bribes from law students to alter their grades. On a larger scale, parents have been convicted of paying for getting their children into elite schools by bribing weak faculty members who gave the underperforming students scholarships they didn't deserve.
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Following this brutal double homicide, Johnston, RI D
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Your point about it being the case in the States may be gleaned besides from the film, "Love Story" where Barrett (played by Ray Milland) attempted to "influence" his son's admission to the Harvard law faculty, etc., but hurray! Barrett IV made it on his own. Very moving film, I must say. Nice to hear from you. Wignesan
It's still happening today. Last year, some people in our law school at the University I worked at were convicted of taking bribes from law students to alter their grades. On a larger scale, parents have been convicted of paying for getting their children into elite schools by bribing weak faculty members who gave the underperforming students scholarships they didn't deserve.
Ron