Ted Goodman (1945-2024)

Edward Goodman was the son of Edward Albert Goodman, and followed his father into the legal profession. He was known to intimates as Ted or Teddy. I called him Ted to his face and Goodman when talking to third parties, mostly my colleague Mark Taha who introduced me to him. I remember him telling me once it was common practice for lawyers to address each other by their Christian names.  I recall one instance when he phoned chambers: “Hello, is Orme there? This is Goodman”.

John Orme was junior counsel in Riley v Gable & Others.

Ted always addressed me as Baron, sometimes as Mr Baron to third parties. I don’t think I ever heard him use my Christian name. Likewise he always referred to my colleague Mark Taha as Taha. He also signed his letters Goodman.

Ted Goodman, photographed about 1990.

Ted’s father died at the ripe old age of 90. His mother was a remarkable woman who lived to the remarkable age of 106. With those genes, one would have expected, hoped, he would have lived at least as long as his father. Sadly, this was not to be. When he spoke at his mother’s funeral in September 2021, he was clearly not a well man. He said he was worried that having outlived two husbands and her own daughter, she would outlive him as well. Thankfully, this was not to be, and he was able to grant her last wish – to die in her own bed in her own home.

In spite of his legal calling, his wish was to be an historian; he certainly succeeded, albeit as an amateur. He was also a man of many talents and lived a life so full I wondered at times how he fitted everything in. So did he. “My life is Hell” he told me more than once when his mother was still alive. This was because not only was he working well past retirement age commuting a long distance, albeit part-time, but he was looking in on his mother, doing anti-censorship work and his own projects in addition to his home life.

Most of the following information about his employment was given to me by Ted in the Summer of 2023 in anticipation of his death.

He studied at the Polytechnic of North London from 1970-73 and took the College of Law Solicitors’ Qualifying Exams in 1973-4 then he worked for a number of law firms, in particular:

Ouvry Goodman 1974-1986

Sendrove And Jacobs, Walthamstow  1986-1987

Chambers & Cc, London W1 1987-1988

Hillearys, London WC1 1988-1991

Saunders,  Norwood Junction 1991-2

 Desmond Pye Partnership, New Cross Gate 1992-8 

 McGoldricks, Croydon 1998-2005

 Tilbury Goddard, Thornton Heath 2005-6

 Gans & Co LLP, Peckham 2006-2023

I cannot vouch for all the above dates, in fact a couple of them are definitely wrong, but by this time Ted was already very ill, the cancer (of which more anon) having returned.

In addition to his interest in history, Ted had a flair for languages including a working knowledge of French – unsurprisingly on account of his mother, he understood some German, and even, I believe, some Russian. He actually visited Moscow at one point. The photograph below was taken on a trip to Egypt in 1972.

Ted married in 1982; his son was born the following year, and his daughter in 1986. She became a teacher – fluent in French; he became a GP.

Returning to his professional life, Ted joined Ouvry & Co in 1974. The firm became Ouvry Goodman, he and his father selling their interest in 1986.

After that he joined Sendrove & Jacobs in Walthamstow. When I pointed out this was a lengthy commute. he said that after travelling into London he would simply hop on the Victoria Line and would be there.

I have to date been unable to find any reference to that firm, although I recall at least one of the lever arch files he gave me in August 2023 as bearing a Walthamstow label.

After leaving Sendrove & Jacobs in 1987 he joined Chambers & Co in the West End of London. That firm no longer exists; from there he moved to Hillearys (no apostrophe) in Fleet Street, which is where I first met him.  Ted’s recollection of his tenure there is incorrect because I met him there in late 1993 or early 1994. I can be certain of this because in March 1993, I was the victim of a malicious police raid which resulted in the seizure of my computer while on November 28, 1993 (a date I will never forget) I was the victim of a serious assault by three hired thugs.

On the recommendation of Mark Taha, I engaged Ted when I sued the police and for my criminal injuries compensation claim re the assault.

At some point I lost contact with him briefly, but in a phone call (I believe from him) he told me “Hillearys has ceased to exist” – I remember those exact words. This must have been 1994 which negates his dating of Saunders at Norwood Junction from 1991-2. That first no longer exists. I never met Ted at the office but I passed it a few times, and one of us, probably him, described it as a toilet.

Ted actually joined the Desmond Pye Partnership at New Cross Gate after leaving Hillearys. This firm no longer exists either. The reason for so many law firms folding is a direct result of Government so-called reforms, especially to Legal Aid. The exception on this list is McGoldricks, of which more anon.

Desmond Pye was a fairly long commute distance-wise but would require him taking only two trains, changing at East Croydon or Norwood Junction then a slow train to New Cross Gate; the office was literally just across the road from the station.

Desmond Pye was run by the man himself, who was well over seventy but very sprite. After it closed, if I recall, Ted moved very briefly to Saunders then to McGoldricks at Croydon, where he might have spent the rest of his career but for one thing. It was an easy commute from his Redhill home although he also put in time at the Dartford office, where I met him once.

McGoldricks had three offices, the first in Altringham. I spoke to Thomas McGoldrick once. Unfortunately, so did the police. The bottom line was that he represented a man who had been left in a wheelchair after a motor accident, and plundered his compensation – money needed for his future care.  To cut a long story short, the fraud came to light in December 2004, three and a half years after the award.  In April 2008, McGoldrick was given a ten year sentence, but Ted moved on long before that, working briefly for Tilbury Goddard in Thornton Heath, which was still a fairly easy commute although it was a bus ride from Easy Croydon Station.

I think I may have visited him there once, but his next and final move was to Gans & Co in Peckham, which is an awkward commute from Redhill, but like I said, he was working part-time, certainly in the later years. He would also meet clients out of the office. Once, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when I met him by arrangement at Redhill Station, I was second in line behind a client.

I will try to go through the rest of this obituary in chronological order as far as possible.

In 1976, the actor David Webb started an anti-censorship organisation and roped in Ted as its legal consultant. Ted was also a member of the Campaign Against Censorship and was its Chairman until his illness. Webb’s NCROPA was concerned primarily with the fight against sexual censorship; CAC had a broader remit.

In 1986, Ted published his first book. Britain: An Unfree Country, which he co-authored with the Egyptologist Terence DuQuesne.

November 1996 to May 1, 1997 was arguably the most difficult time in my life. I have written about this elsewhere so will say only that Ted more than showed his worth during these dark days, handling civil litigation for me that I was eventually able to settle to my satisfaction. He was also the solicitor on the record when Mark Taha sued the same odious individual, and when the late Morris Riley scored a spectacular victory in his aforementioned libel action of February 2000.

Ted served as a Labour Councillor in Redhill from 1990-2002 and was also a (failed) Labour candidate in the general election.  In July 2006, he joined Redhill & Reigate Stop The War Coalition, and although he didn’t speak about it much, he was passionately opposed to all forms of military intervention.  

David Webb died in June 2012, and Ted was his executor. This involved clearing out his Chelsea apartment. Among the documents was the NCROPA archive. I can’t remember whose idea it was, his or mine, but I was given the Herculean task of scanning it. He delivered the dozens of boxes to my home and I set about scanning a good selection. In the end, I scanned nearly three thousand documents, some of them quite lengthy. Ted wanted to deposit them in an archive, so I contacted Kew, which although the repository for British Government documents also has some private collections.

Kew declined to acquire them but pointed me to the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University. I contacted the Centre who agreed to acquire them, and Ted arranged for them to be delivered.

On April 17, 2014, Ted’s co-author Terence DuQuesne died following a fire at his Norbury home. Ted was his executor, and as with Webb, he invited me along to salvage what I could. This time there wasn’t much. DuQuesne had two funeral services of sorts. Due to complications with the cause of death, the first was not held until June 19, at Camberwell Cemetery and Crematorium, which was as near to the Summer Solstice as possible in accord with his Pagan beliefs.

His old friend Dwina Murphy-Gibb (the widow of Bee Gee Robin Gibb) came down from Oxfordshire and delivered a eulogy over his coffin. Ted was Master of Ceremonies. Dwina had also inherited some of DuQuesne’s papers. Ted wanted the rest to go to an archive; I think he may have suggested Oxford. At any rate, I contacted the relevant institution and Ted did the rest. If I remember correctly, they sent two people down who spent a couple of days examining them. Considering the place had been set on fire, there was surprisingly little damage. At any rate, the DuQuesne papers are now housed by The Griffin Institute.

The following June, Dwina held a special service for DuQuesne in the grounds of her vast Oxfordshire home.  The original plan was for his ashes to be scattered in Egypt on the Solstice, instead they were buried in Dwina’s garden. She arranged for transport, and two large vehicles took a small group of us there from Norbury Crescent. Ted was in his element, rubbing shoulders inter alia with the drug smuggler Howard Marks (now deceased).

The four photographs above were taken by Daniel Jacobs, DuQuesne’s publisher.  With one exception – one taken 6 days before his death – they are the only photographs of the two of us together, unless some turn up from CCTV or some such in the future.

For several years before and after the Covid-19 lockdowns, we met regularly around once a month at my place. Often a third party (who will remain nameless) also attended. Ted would also throw a bit of work my way when he could, the most bizarre of which was to accompany him to a house in Forest Hill in 2016. He needed to deliver a letter by hand to someone who had been named in a property dispute. When we arrived at the basement door it was ajar so we ventured in, calling out.

There was no electricity, so we were expecting it to be empty, but it was occupied by a young bloke who said he was the son of the recipient. I can’t remember much more but we both thought that was weird.

On February 18, 2018, Ted’s cousin died, and once again he was called upon to act as an executor. Charles Edward Goodman (who was also known by his middle name) had moved to Herne Bay decades earlier after a failed love affair or something. Ted had not been in close contact with him but told me on one occasion “This bloke wasted his life”.

In his later years, Ted suffered greatly, at this time he had a severe optical problem and for a while was functionally blind in one eye. He asked me to accompany him to Herne Bay which I did at least four times, if I recall. We cleared the bungalow, he registered the death, and arranged for the funeral, which was a woodland burial. This wasn’t the last funeral we would attended together. There was the funeral of private investigator Len Martin and the barrister Nigel Ley – Nigel Joseph Ley to avoid confusion with another barrister so named.

Martin’s was a regular Christian funeral service, if I recall; Ley’s was a Jewish service held at Golders Green Crematorium during the Covid-19 lockdowns, so that was quite an eclectic mix.

Ted had worked with both men, with Martin when he was with Desmond Pye. Ley had been brought in as lead counsel for Riley v Gable when John Orme, who had never conducted a libel trial, lost his nerve at the last moment.

Although I had done some work on them before, it was in 2018 that Ted really roped me in for his private projects, starting with his mother’s memoirs. He doted on her and realising the uniqueness of her life story, he was determined to memorialise it. In her 90s she dictated it to him, and I was given the formidable task of putting it into a readable form. Ted read and commented on the manuscript at every stage, and we became joint editors. I had wanted to present her with her own personal copy of the book signed by both of us, but because of the lockdowns, publication was delayed.

Ted was also a talented artist, but best not to mention some of his drawings! The other projects he roped me in for were the British Prudery Archive – which occupies a directory on my main website, his history of the line of descent of the rulers of Britain, which I hope to publish at some point if only as a PDF, and his Clio History Project, which I found somewhat bizarre, but that was Ted. Clio is the Muse of History.

Like many people of his generation, Ted was not happy sitting in front of a computer; he was also the victim of on-line fraud more than once. If I recall correctly, the first time he was nearly taken to the cleaners. He had some trouble with his machine and ended up forking out the best part of a grand to two different outfits within days of each other, probably having found his way onto a sucker list. I was astounded at the gullibility of the man who once commented of the police that “They make their own work”, and I have no doubt they would have kept milking him, but that was Ted.

Fortunately, he told me in time, and because he had paid with his American Express credit card instead of a debit card, he was able to get all his money back.

In September 2022, his Yahoo account was hacked, which caused him a great deal of inconvenience but fortunately we were able to restore it without financial loss within a couple of weeks.

In July 2023, he was hacked again, this time by an even more malicious entity. I assisted him as best I could over the phone, and he managed to restore it.  Change the password, I said. Alas! On August 2, he phoned and asked me to come to Redhill. It was my 67^th birthday so I was not happy about that. We spent some time on the premium helpline, which was no help at all, and he sent me home in an Uber with a large tranche of lever arch files which contained over four thousand documents for me to scan. He never did get his Yahoo account back.

By the time of his mother’s funeral, Ted was seriously ill, having been diagnosed with stomach cancer. He was required to undergo both chemotherapy and surgery. For a man in his seventies that is an ordeal, and he had to exercise to make sure he was strong enough. The treatment seemed to have worked. Like me, Ted was a big eater, but when we dined out now he would eat a smaller meal with no drink. He would joke that he had half a brain and a quarter of a stomach. Sadly, the laughter stopped when the cancer returned and metastasised.

We had arranged to meet at my place on June 19, 2023, but he phoned me well in advance to tell me he couldn’t because he needed to have an operation. When I phoned him back he told he me had to undergo tests. When I phoned again on the evening of June 19, he told me the cancer had returned but he would be discharged soon and that his treatment from now on would be palliative. He asked me if I knew what that word meant. Sadly, I did. He said he probably had a few months left and that we would have to meet in Redhill in future. He had already advised Gans of his condition.

On August 14, he was scheduled to return to hospital for tests. Two days later, he phoned me and told me he was still there. The cancer had definitely returned. He had been unable to eat and was due to undergo further chemotherapy. They were unable to operate because there was not enough stomach left for them to remove.

On December 6, having e-mailed him many times after November 30 without reply, I phoned him, and he confirmed my worst suspicions. He was in hospital again, and, he said, drugged up heavily. He said he had a liver infection. He was discharged a few day before Christmas. He had expected to be sent to a hospice in Crawley but a place was found for him closer to home.

On February 9, 2024, Mark and I visited him in Room 86 at the Acorn Court Care Home, Redhill. We took a photograph of him with each of us, but they are too shocking to publish.  I was informed of his death only on February 19 by Daniel Jacobs. I had contacted him only recently to tell him Ted had at best months to live, and Daniel had phoned the home.

I spoke to Ted’s son the following morning and was told I would not be welcome at his father’s funeral. Ted told me a long time ago that his family didn’t approve of his other projects and that his son in particular thought they were a waste of time. I didn’t realise how little he thought of them until later that day.

On April 18, 2023, Ted registered the domain cliohistory.xyz -  the odd extension rather than something like .org or the very appropriate .info was due to the hosting company offering it free with a new account. When I tried to access the site after speaking to Ted’s son, the HomePage was gone although it still showed up on a Google search. I had archived much of the site in November, so here is the HomePage. The company informed me that the account had been closed, clearly not by Ted and not on his instructions either if my last conversation with him is anything to go by. Sad or what?

 I could write a lot more about Ted but one curious thing is that in spite of our thirty year association, I never called him my friend. I had started as his client become an agent, an assistant, and finally a collaborator, but I never called him a friend nor did me call me one. I don’t know if he regarded me as such but he was a good friend to me and to my colleague Mark Taha. He was also capable of acts of spontaneous kindness which I witnessed personally on more than one occasion.

Although he did not live anything like as long as his mother, he certainly lived life to the full, cramming as much into his 78 years as she did into her 106.

Ted may have been many things, but he was no poet. Having said that, he sent me the following epitaph in July 2023, which is reproduced here verbatim.

WARNING

I heard a knocking at my door,

I opened and a ghastly spectre saw.

It was a skeleton standing there,

that in its hand a watch did bear.

It warned me that my time was short

and that my plans would come to naught,

if I did not achieve them fast

before I would have breathed my last.

GOODBYE

The Angel of Death called my name

and to this heavenly realm I came.

It is the abode of the ghosts of the dead,

a peaceful place not to dread.

Mourn not my passing, for I am happy here

far away from strife and fear.

I have my memories - magic moments with loved ones

laughter of grandchildren on fun runs.

I leave just a fading image, remembered by few

of a white bearded man who said “Adieu.”

When those few disappear, so do I,

surviving only as a spirit in the sky.

Edward Anthony Charles Goodman: born Eastbourne, October 26, 1945; died Redhill, February 15, 2024.