of patients in mental asylums. His investigations into the treatment of inmates at Bethlem Hospital ("Bedlam") outraged the public and politicians alike and consequently Bedlam's Governor resigned. Around this time Hone took a small lodging in the Old Bailey, keeping himself and his growing family by contributions to magazines and reviews. He hired a small shop in Fleet Street but this was twice robbed, with valuable books placed on show stolen. In 1815 he started the Traveller newspaper, and tried in vain to save Elizabeth Fenning, a cook convicted on thin evidence of poisoning her employers with arsenic. Although Fenning was executed, Hone's 240-page book on the subject, The Important Results of an Elaborate Investigation into the Mysterious Case of Eliza Fenning – widely considered a landmark in investigative journalism – demolished the prosecution's case. From 1 February to 25 October 1817, Hone published the Reformists' Register, using it to criticise state abuses, which he later attacked in the famous political squibs and parodies, illustrated by George Cruikshank. At the time of publishing the Register, Hone mentions his office as Number 67, Old Bailey, three doors from Ludgate Hill. In April 1817 three ex-officio informations were filed against him by the attorney-general, Sir William Garrow. Three separate trials took place in the Guildhall before special juries on 18, 19 and 20 December 1817. The first, for publishing The Late John Wilkes's Catechism of a Ministerial Member (1817), was before Mr Justice Abbot (afterwards Lord Tenterden); the second, for parodying the litany and libelling the Prince Regent in The Political Litany (1817), and the third, for publishing the Sinecurist's Creed (1817), a parody on the Athanasian Creed, were before Lord Ellenborough. The prosecution took the ground that the prints were harmful to public morals and brought the prayer-book and even religion itself into contempt. The real motives of the prosecution were political: Hone had ridiculed the habits and exposed the corruption of those in power. He went to the root of the matter when he wished the jury "to understand that, had he been a publisher of ministerial parodies, he would not then have been defending himself on the floor of that court." In spite of illness and exhaustion Hone spoke on each of the three days for about seven hours. Although his judges were biased against him, he was acquitted on each count, and the result was received enthusiastically by