this was not a charge that was being tried. The judge discredited Edith Thompson's account of the murder. She swooned (according to her, the judge notes) and she lied to shield the killer. Above all the witnesses who claimed to have heard her scream of ‘Oh don’t, oh don’t!’ may not be reliable. In his closing comments Mr Justice Shearman impugned the integrity of the important witness John Webber, whose house overlooked the scene of the murder. Webber's is, according to the judge, a ‘very curious piece of evidence’. If Webber can be trusted to tell the truth, then there is corroborative proof of Edith Thompson's spontaneous panic and hysteria during the fight and stabbings. The judge directs the jury: ‘You know he [Webber] is some way off; I am not saying it is true; it is for you to say whether it is accurate, or whether it is imaginary, or whether he has made a mistake.’ Such direct undermining of a bona fide witness chimed with the judge's evident hostility towards Edith Thompson. His wider anti-feminist bias at the trial was evident and extensively commented on at the time. Thus he consistently referred to the jury as "gentlemen" in spite of the fact that the jury included a woman juror. Shearman labelled Edith an 'adulterer' and therefore deceitful and wicked and, by implication, easily capable of murder. Her letters were full of "insensate silly affection". He similarly repeatedly called Bywaters an 'adulterer'. However, Filson Young, in writing contemporaneously with the trial in Notable British Trials (1923), suggests that it was the young of that generation who needed to learn morality: 'Mr Justice Shearman frequently referred to Bywaters as "the adulterer," apparently quite unconscious of the fact that, to people of Bywaters' generation, educated in the ethics of dear labour and cheap pleasure, of commercial sport and the dancing hall, adultery is merely a quaint ecclesiastical term for what seems to them the great romantic adventure of their lives. Adultery to such people may or may not be "sporting," but its wrongness is not a matter that would trouble them for a moment. Sinai, for them, is wrapped in impenetrable cloud. And if we are not prepared to adapt the laws of Sinai to the principles of the night club and thé dansant, I see no other alternative but to educate again our young in the eternal verities on which