THE long-standing notion that justice should be seen to be done becomes more laughable by the week.

In the 43 years I have worked on this newspaper, the number of magistrates’ courts operating in the area has dwindled from four to nil, and all crime seems to have been cleared up miraculously.

The nearest magistrates’ court is now at Newcastle, where cases involving Tynedale people are as scarce as smiles on an EastEnders set.

What has happened to all those fighters, drunks, petty thieves and other miscreants who flocked to the district’s courts in their droves not so very long ago? Have they all turned over a new leaf – or are the police turning a blind eye to the petty crime that was meat and drink to the Courant for decades?

According to the latest figures produced by the police, crime is plummeting in the Tynedale district, but the cynics amongst us suspect that has more to do with people no longer being taken to court for actions which certainly would have put them in the dock a decade or more ago.

From my own experience, I was involved in a road accident some years ago when, as I returned from a spell working behind the bar at Dontino’s night spot in Hexham, a driver who was slightly over-refreshed went to sleep at the wheel of his car, and drifted into mine on the A68 near Barrasford.

He sped off, with me in hot pursuit and I eventually found him hiding in a gateway. We exchanged names and addresses, but he then sped off again, and I rang the police to ascertain that the address he had given me coincided with that indicated by his car number plate.

That was indeed the case, and the end of the matter as far as I was concerned - but unknown to me, the driver was then hunted down, and brought to court to face a string of charges.

Fast forward some 30 years, and a man sent me an email – thoughtfully copied to the police – threatening to wait outside the office with a baseball bat with which to break both my legs for some imagined slight.

A threat of physical violence seemed a cut and dried offence to me, but the police pressed no charges, on the grounds that they did not think he would do anything!

Courts sat in splendour at Alston, Bellingham and Haltwhistle, as well as at Hexham, where magistrates sat on five days every week, often running up to three courts simultaneously.

It was a great training ground for cub reporters, where they were quick to realise that getting your name in the Courant for weeing in Fore Street or speeding along the West Road was a far more severe punishment than any fine which might be imposed.

There was never any shortage of ne’er-do-wells ascending the stone stairs up to the courtroom alongside the Abbey, always armed with some unlikely story of how they found themselves in the dock.

I well recall the tale of the head of a family which was no stranger to the court, setting off for a walk along Fore Street, ducking into the much-missed Woolworth’s Store, and snatching up a gallon tin of emulsion, which he boldly carried out of the back door into Back Street.

He carried his acquisition into the Robin Hood pub in Old Church, and offered it at a very reasonable rate to the man standing beside him at the bar - who to his chagrin turned out to be an off duty policeman.

Once a month or so, there was the county court, where a circuit judge would dispense justice on civil matters, such as farmers or businessmen wishing to reclaim their cottages from farm workers or ex-employees who were reluctant to leave.

Seeing the robed and bewigged judge proved all too much for some witnesses, who were completely overawed by the vision of rectitude before them, but they were treated in a much kinder manner than the young solicitors who had to cut their civil teeth before men like the acid-tongued Judge Lyall Wilkes.

He was said to have thrown a young solicitor out of his court simply for wearing a brown suit, and when one witness complained that she did not have a clever solicitor like Mr X to plead her case, the judge leaned forward and whispered to her conspiratorially: “Oh, I wouldn’t say Mr X is a clever solicitor...”