s. There was a great deal of sympathy for the prisoner among the
judges. Of course, they could not admit that any man had the right to
take the law into his own hands, but they realised that if any wrong done
to an individual could justify this course it was the wrong Sir Horace
Fewbanks had done to an old friend.

When it became known that Mr. Justice Hodson was to preside at the Old
Bailey during the trial of Holymead, legal rumour concerned itself with
statements to the effect that there was now a difficulty in obtaining a
K.C. to undertake the prosecution. When it was discovered that Mr.
Walters, K.C., was to conduct the prosecution, it was whispered that he
had asked to be relieved of the work and had even waited on the
Attorney-General in the matter, but that the latter had told him that he
must put his personal feelings aside and act in accordance with that high
sense of duty he had always shown in his professional career.

In Newgate Street a long queue of people waited for admission to Old
Bailey on the day the trial was to begin. They were inspected by two fat
policemen to decide whether they appeared respectable enough to be
entitled to a free seat at the entertainment in Number One Court. When
the doors opened at 10.15 a.m. the first batch of them were admitted, but
on reaching the top of the stairs, where they were inspected by a
sergeant, they were informed that all the seats in the gallery of Number
One Court had been filled, but that he would graciously permit them to go
to Numbers Two, Three, Four, or Five Courts. Those who were not satisfied
with this generosity could get out the way they had come in and be quick
about it. What the sergeant did not explain was that so many people with
social influence had applied to the presiding judge for permission to be
present at the trial that it had been found necessary to reserve the
gallery for them as well as most of the seats in the body of the court.
Fashionably-dressed ladies and well-groomed men drove up to the main
entrance of the Old Bailey in motors and taxi-cabs. The scene was as busy
as the scene outside a West End theatre on a first night. The services of
several policemen were necessary to regulate the arrival and departure of
taxi-cabs and motor-cars and to keep back the staring mob of disappointed
people who had been refused admission to the court by the fat sergeant,
but were determined to see as much as they could before they went away.
Elderly