Parliamentary legislation in the nineteenth century continued the reform of the criminal law. Today no courtroom drama is complete without the defence barrister vehemently addressing the jury on his client's behalf. It is the culminating point of the defence, cross-examination merely providing the material for the speech. Yet until 1836, except in treason trials, only the prosecution had this privilege, not the defence. In that year the Prisoners' Counsel Act specifically authorised defence barristers to address the jury. Defendants could not yet give evidence under oath in their own defence, and barristers, allowed at last to speak on their behalf, were in effect their mouthpieces. The adversarial system as we know it was fully formed.

This change allowed for the inexorable rise of defence barristers, who began to dominate the court room in all sorts of cases from the venial to the most vile. The defence speech was to be the highlight of the case, and required flamboyance and theatricality. Advocacy was an art, but it was also an act. The barrister as thespian was emerging. With the advent of the popular press such men would become celebrities. The role was tailor-made for a showman, and none mastered it better than the tall, handsome young Rugby and Cambridge man, Edward Marshall Hall, who in 1882 was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple.