agrees that a stop should be put to his effusions but feels that it might not look very well for a man who is obviously demented to get six months imprisonment. Would it not be possible to keep him under observation with a view to his final detention in an institution, without actually putting him in prison." Despite this request, Sir John Anderson at the Home Office decided that he was "not so obviously demented or insane that he could be dealt with without recourse to court proceedings." Hall was said to have addressed over 1,000 meetings in a six-year period. He was arrested many times for using "scandalous language", and was fined and bound over to keep the peace. For example, in 1936 he appeared before a city magistrates' court in Hereford after attempting to hold a public meeting in St Peter's Square, charged with obstructing the free passage of the square, assaulting a local police inspector who intervened, and conducting himself "in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace". He declared in the court that he would make Hereford his capital city and that he would establish royal mints "in every city in the country". When he was fined £20 he initially refused to pay, protesting that as their "lawful king" they could not demand it. In London, which he pledged to rebuild to house 100 million people and where he served eviction notices to the King at Buckingham Palace, he was known to declare his claims loudly up to five times a day in the areas around Tower Hill and near the Woolwich Dockyard. He also moved around the country to proclaim his claim, and sold slips of paper which he said would be the new currency once he ascended to the throne. In July 1937, he was fined £1 for selling those pamphlets in Southend, and during the court case he declared that his name was also Anthony Tudor. During his incarcerations, he was reviewed by two prison doctors who could not find evidence of any insanity, while one, Dr Hamblin Smith, said that Hall's ideas for resolving the national debt were not insane. Later life In 1939, divorce proceedings were brought against him by his wife. During the court hearing, he conducted his own case and questioned his wife for more than six hours. In summing up, the judge said of Mr