The Judge Who Was Only 'Sober as a Judge'
A legendary anecdote from the Seattle police court where a witness’s inadvertent insult revealed the bench's own notorious reputation for intoxication.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is too good to pass over in silence. I cannot give precise dates, for the good judge is living now—or, he was two days ago—but when he was on the bench—it was of the police court—he was in the habit of drinking freely. He was fond of good company and of good suppers; he was a capital after-dinner speaker, and seldom was there a big spread to which he was not invited. More than once the judge had been so full of the distilled spirit that its influence had been to make him maudlin and silly; yet his comrades laughed at him and thought it no harm. And so far from feeling in danger was the judge himself, that he had more than once joked upon his own failing, and he had fallen into the habit, when in his cups, of saying, jokingly: 'I’m sober as a judge.' And thereat all hands would indulge in a hearty laugh.
Well, once upon a time, following one of the judge's most eventful nights of oyster and game suppers, he had a case before him of unusual interest. The defendant was a man of means, and the court-room was well filled with the judge's personal friends. A witness was called, a short, dumpy, jolly-faced, blear-eyed man whose testimony the counsel sought to invalidate by proving he was drunk on the occasion in question.
'Witness, were you sober enough on that occasion to know just what was going on around you?' asked the counsel. 'I was sober as a man ever was,' replied the witness.
Eventually, the judge interrupted, proposing to solve the matter himself: 'Witness, how many times had you drunk on that day before the event transpired?' 'Well, judge, perhaps I drank a dozen times.' 'And what had been your drink? What had you drunk chiefly at those twelve drinks?' 'Chiefly whisky, yer honor.' 'And do you pretend to say that you were sober after that?'
The man straightened himself suddenly and took a look of patronizing familiarity. 'Sober, yer honor? I was sober as a judge, and you ought to know it.'
It was too good. The judge sent him down instanter and took his testimony for what it was worth.
“Sober, yer honor? I was sober as a judge, and you ought to know it.”
This 1882 anecdote captures a time when Seattle's civic institutions were informal, rugged, and often fueled by the frontier's ubiquitous supply of liquor. Today, while city hall operates under a different set of professional standards, the story reflects a perennial local anxiety about who is really running the show—and whether those in power have their wits about them.
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