Review: Stone's Justices' Manual for 1931
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3100400426 |
| Date | 01 October 1931 |
| Published date | 01 October 1931 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS
637
etitions, agitation, press correspondence etc., with the faculty up in
arms.
&he Home Secretary referred the record to the leading surgeon who, largely
for
non-medical
reasons,
wrote that there was not absolute and complete
evidence of guilt. Result a pardon, but a prosecution and
a
year’s impnson-
ment for bigamy. Dr. Parry’s analysis is masterly. The circumstantial
evidence, he holds, gave enough probability for conviction, and enough pos-
sibility for acquittal
:
the determining factor was the medical evidence
:
clinically this made poison likely but dysentery etc. not undeniable
:
patho-
logically it was inconclusive
:
chemically it disproved arsenic and did not
prove antimony. Therefore the evidence, both circumstantial and scientific,
failed to prove guilt. In the Foreword Mr. Flowers considers that in the
twentieth century acquittal would have followed the close of the prosecution
As
regards Harold Greenwood Miss Winifred Duke’s able arguments will
carry
general conviction. It is difficult to believe that a solicitor of forty-five
with an inconsiderable practice, though unpleasant, callous and a philanderer,
should poison an invalid wife, not expected to live long, who was uninsured
and whose
E6oo
or more a year passed to her four children, merely in order
to marry a penniless woman of over thirty, whom he had known from a child
and whom he had not compromised.
The evidence of the bungling Dr. Grifiths, who had himself to defend,
was suspect, as was that of his jealous sister, while Irene Greenwood, whom
even the Crown Counsel dared not accuse of lying, partly shattered the pro-
secution case. It is now disclosed however that the acquittal was not trium-
phant. The Jury’s written verdict, which the Judge refused to publish,
was that
a
dangerous dose of arsenic had been administered, but that they
were not satisfied that this was the immediate cause of death, or how or by
whom it had been administered. The inference is that Mrs. Greenwood
was either purposely poisoned by her husband, or accidentally by Dr.
Griffiths
:
she may
have
actually died from the morphia pills, but would have
died from arsenic. The refusal of a refresher to Sir Marshall Hall is shown
untrue.
Case.
STONE’S
JUSTICES’ MANUAL for 1931. 63rd Edition.
Mr.
DINGLE,
Clerk
to
the Justices of the city of Sheffield and the West Riding
Justices, Sheffield, has brought out the 63rd edition of Stone, incorporating
all the latest statutes and decisions relevant to Police Court work. The most
important additions are the Road Traffic Act, 1930, and the Hi hway Code.
a book. Arranged for the most part in alphabetical order, it contains every-
thing; and, if particular things are sometimes difficult to find, there is compen-
sation in their accuracy when they are found. Stone, like Archbold, is
of
course indispensable.
DANGEROUS DRUGS
:
THE WORLD FIGHT AGAINST ILLICIT
TRADE IN NARCOTICS.
By
ARTHUR
WOODS.
Price,
$2;
and
Oxford University Press,
9s.
(Yale University Press, New Haven,
Connecticut. London
:
Oxford University Press.
1931
.)
IT
is
only within the last few years that the civilised world has developed a
collective conscience
as
to
its
responsibility towards the illicit traffic in drugs,
and
has
endeavoured by international action to check an ever-spreading evil.
In this little book an outline is given of the various measures devised by
37s.
6d. and
42s.
6d. (Butterworth
&
Co. and Shaw
&
Sons.)
Stone, with its 2037 pages,
is
really rather
a
Police Court encyc
P
opsdia than
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