Claud Mullins: Rebel, Reformer, Reactionary

Emma Dally remembered her grandfather as a remote and bad-tempered old man constantly complaining about his noisy grandchildren. She knew he had once been one of the most famous men in Britain but she didn’t know why. Thirty-five years after Claud’s death, Emma began to read his private diaries and unpublished memoirs. Suddenly she was interested. Reading through the diaries and other papers, she began to recognise her grandfather as a remarkable and forceful individual who, from the lowly judicial position of stipendiary magistrate, had succeeded in getting the law changed several times.

In many ways Claud Mullins was ahead of his time, refusing to send anyone under twenty to prison, separating family disputes from criminal cases in his own court, sending sex offenders to psychiatrists instead of punishing them, and campaigning to educate the working class about sex and family planning and incurring the wrath of church leaders who did not think birth control was for the masses. He believed that courts had a social as well as judicial role and strove to save working-class marriages whenever he could. A brilliant propagandist who was never afraid to say what he thought, he made enemies along the way, culminating in his being denounced in the House of Commons by Herbert Morrison, Peter Mandelson’s grandfather. His diaries also revealed the sad truth that the man dubbed the ‘Marriage Mender’ by the press, had serious sexual and relationship problems of his own.