London Legal Letter. etor of the Anti-Jacobin, by which he had been accused of complicity in Robert Em met's plans, also resulted in a verdict for
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the plaintiff. All the foregoing cases were tried with a display of ability out of all pro portion to their intrinsic importance.
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. ГTHING for many years past has so deeply stirred English feeling as the events connected with the romantic story of Adolf Beck. It has by many writers been likened to "L'Affaire Dreyfus." Certainly both in cidents have this in common, that the two men, Beck and Dreyfus, were the victims of a cruel miscarriage of justice in consequence of which they each suffered a long term of imprisonment before they could persuade the authorities of their innocence. There is noth ing of which an Englishman is rightfully more proud than English justice. Here, if anywhere in the world, the Courts are free from corruption. In fact, so far as the personnel of the bench and the bar hav ing to do with criminal affairs is concerned, the system is ideal. And yet, notwithstanding this fact, a shocking miscarriage of justice has occurred which has convinced the great majority of thinking people, that there is something radically wrong with the adminis tration of the law in England. Adolf Beck's case, in outline, is as follows: As far back as 1877 a man wno gave the name of John Smith was tried and convicted at the Old Bailey for robbing a number of women of rings and other articles of jewelry. They were women of the "unfortunate" class whom he had accosted on the street, repre senting himself to be "Lord Willoughby." He asked leave to call at their houses or rooms, told them he wanted a housekeeper for a "nice little house in St. John's Wood— a part of London which at one time con tained many houses where women were
SEPTEMBER. 1904. "kept." If those whom he accosted, as was nearly always the case, agreed to his propo sition, he made out a list of clothes they were to purchase and gave them bogus checks on a certain well-known bank with which to do their required shopping. He then at parting "borrowed" their rings "to get better ones made of the same size." He obtained in this way rings and jewelry of considerable value from no less than seventeen women. Upon being found guilty he was sentenced to five years' penal servitude. The policeman who arrested him and who worked up the case against him was a man named Sparrell. and the counsel who prosecuted him was Mr. Forrest Fulton. Smith came out of prison in due course, and nothing more was heard of him. But in 1896, no less than nineteen years after the first series of crimes, the same thing began again; a man defrauded a number of women in exactly the same way, telling them the same story, except that he now passed as the "Earl of Wilton" and once as "Lord Wilton de Willoughby." The same house in St. John's Wood was offered, the same clothes, the same bogus checks were given upon the same bank, and again rings were borrowed and never returned On this new series of charges the police arrested Adolf Beck. He was brought be fore a stipendiary magistrate, and the police man, Sparrell, gave evidence, saying in the strongest terms that he had been present at the trial of John Smith in 1877 and that "the prisoner is the man. Beck was sent to the Old Bailey for trial and by a curious coin
