Obituary: Nicholas Bridges-Adams

THE FACTS of judicial life were once outlined by an eminent Lord Justice to newly recruited Assistant Recorders in terms redolent of Field Marshal Haig: "Eighty per cent of the cases coming before you will decide themselves. Of the remaining 20 per cent, you will probably get half right and half wrong. Ten per cent is an acceptable margin of error."

As the longest-serving Recorder appointed under the 1971 Courts Act, Nicholas Bridges-Adams adopted a more exacting standard. In 25 years of sitting, during which he dispensed justice fairly and expeditiously in every county and Crown court in London (including the Old Bailey and Central London County Court), he was successfully appealed only four times.

A full-time appointment eluded Bridges-Adams largely because of the leukaemia which struck him in his mid-forties, and which, in the Darwinian perspective then applied to such matters, marked him down as an uncertain prospect. Realising this, Bridges-Adams developed a busy career as an arbitrator, becoming a member of innumerable panels and, in 1997, London Branch Chairman of the Chartered Institute. A man of wide interests and vast acquaintance, he was a devout Roman Catholic and the founding Chairman of the Association of Catholic Lawyers, which, with a national membership, helped initiate informed debate within the Church on difficult canon law issues associated with medical advances in genetic engineering and the artificial prolongation of life.

The son of William Bridges- Adams, a distinguished pre-war Shakespearian producer and director (known - for his rigorous textual fidelity - as "Unabridges-Adams"), Nicholas Bridges-Adams was educated at Stowe, then commissioned into the Royal Artillery. His officer-like qualities were quickly identified when he completed an assault course, impressively covered in blood, after breaking his nose in a fall from the first obstacle. He later transferred to the RAF Regiment, where he gained his wings.

Flying had its later uses: instructed in the proposed prosecution of a helicopter pilot for making a reckless landing, Bridges-Adams personally hired and flew a helicopter to the locus: landing it, he discovered a dangerous prevailing cross-wind and advised that no charges be brought. Characteristically, he paid for the flight himself.

Bridges-Adams was a history scholar at Oriel, Oxford, where he also took up Conservative politics. He was called to the Bar in 1958 and, after pupillages with Gerald Darling and Sir Harold Cassel, joined admiralty chambers at Queen Elizabeth Building. Intelligent and industrious, he rapidly established himself in practice. He served on the Bar Council, as Junior to the Middlesex Sessions Bar Mess, and contributed to Halsbury's Laws of England on Collisions at Sea. But, by the early 1970s, shipping safety improvements had made admiralty work scarcer, and Bridges-Adams had begun to find it monotonous. In 1974, he moved to criminal chambers. Shortly thereafter, the shadow of his illness fell, and he lived in terror of "conking out" (requiring transfusion) in the course of a lengthy criminal trial.

As an advocate, his innate courtesy, kindness and integrity led Bridges- Adams to disdain the killer instinct and in Court this could sometimes leave him, like the General Belgrano, well- prepared but vulnerable. Happily the same qualities worked to much greater benign effect as a judge or arbitrator. Unlike some of the new-strain inquisitorial judges, Bridges-Adams took pains to hear and consider the evidence before, rather than after, deciding which way the cat should jump. He was a popular and forward-looking head of chambers at 2 Field Court, Gray's Inn, from 1979 to 1992.

Bridges-Adams's life was not entirely devoid of the quixotic. In his very early days, achieving a courtroom success against his better moral judgement, the losing litigant was astonished to receive his claim from Bridges-Adams personally. In 1967, having volunteered for the Israeli army, he was told that he was needed as a military bus driver. Bridges- Adams took a lightning PSV course only to find himself overtaken by the even swifter end of the Six Day War.

As the Conservative candidate at West Bromwich West in 1974 (against Betty Boothroyd, whom he found "a bit fierce"), Bridges-Adams was nonplussed on the hustings by a Tory-looking lady asking how he described himself. Distractedly replying "Barrister of Lincoln's Inn and Recorder of the Crown Court", he was later horrified to find those words printed, instead of "Conservative", next to his name on the ballot paper. He was not returned to Parliament, but later did valuable work as Chairman of the Criminal Law sub-committee of the Association of Conservative Lawyers.

Part of his charm was a life style harking back to an earlier age. Until recently when in London he stayed at the Savile or the Garrick, and when at home in Suffolk enjoyed shooting parties, sailing or flying. He loved literature and music, particularly that of Britten and Sir Arthur Bliss, whom he knew.

Bridges-Adams's triumph lay in enduring misfortune as a stoic, not becoming a cynic, and enjoying the hinterland of his life as an epicurean. He was fortified by a sincere Christian faith and unswerving loyalty to the Catholic Church. It was entirely fitting that at his funeral Mass there was sung the famous hymn written by his ancestor Sarah Flower Adams: "Nearer, My God, to Thee".

John Nicholas William Bridges-Adams, barrister: born 16 September 1930; called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn 1958 (ad eundem Gray's Inn 1979); a Recorder of the Crown Court 1972-98; Head of Chambers, 2 Field Court 1979-92; married 1962 Jenifer Sandell; died Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk 26 September 1998.