CURRENT LITERATURE.
NOTABLE ENGLISH TRIALS.
The Trial of Mary Blandy. Edited by William Roughead. The Trial of I. A. Dickman. Edited by S. 0. Rowan Ffamilton. "Notable English Trials" Series. (William Hodge and Co. 5s. net per vol.)—Each of these new volumes of Messrs. Hodge's excellent series emphasizes a point in a recent article on " Arsenic" in the Spectator. The Blandy case, one of the most famous in the whole history of crime, is the first in which we have any detailed record of convincing scientific proof of poisoning. The tests applied were, of course, far less -exact than those of Marsh and Reinach, but the medical -evidence 'played an exceedingly important part in the trial and it is interesting to note that Dr. Addington, father of Lord Sidmouth, was one of the physicians called. This, how. -ever, is only one tiny point in a case which bristles with -every kind of interest, both historic and psychological. Indeed, the character of the criminal alone deserves a whole volume of analysis to itself. The Dickman case is, by comparison, a sordid and prosaic affair. Its chief interest lies in the way in which it illustrates the dangers of the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898. Guilty or not, there is no doubt that Dickman's own evidence was his undoing, as Mr. Rowan Hamilton in his brief introduction most clearly shows. Both volumes are well edited, Mr. Roughead, in particular, handling his tremendous mass of material most skilfully, though in a style rather toe persistently humorous for his subject.
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