A solicitor with offices in Scarborough, William Otter Woodall (1837 1914) was a prominent member of the local community. This work, edited by Woodall and first published in 1873, brings together reports of seven notable and intriguing nineteenth-century civil and criminal trials as case studies for the benefit of the legal profession. (It was intended as the first of a series, but no further volumes were published.) The book includes that of the so-called 'Quaker' poisoner John Tawell, executed in 1845, who was the first person to be arrested with the aid of the electric telegraph and about...