panel of magistrates, and ex-Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross, a member of the opposition, at a hotel in Lewes. As Lord Chief Justice, Goddard had a responsibility for the conduct of all courts in England and Wales, from magistrates' courts to the Court of Appeal and the subject of their conversation is unreported and unknown. The reasons for this supposed interference alleged by Cullen include concerns of the effect on the medical profession of a doctor being sentenced to death for prescribing certain medication in the course of treating patients at a time when doctors were already disaffected with the NHS. The case was "very important for the medical profession", as the Attorney-General, a government minister, had created the threat of a death sentence by indicting Adams for two murders, an unusual practice in 1957. Other reasons suggested, with no direct relationship to the medical profession, were the Suez Crisis, which caused Anthony Eden to resign in January 1957, to be replaced by Harold Macmillan's initially insecure government, and links to Harold Macmillan personally, through the death on 26 November 1950, over six years before the trial, of The 10th Duke of Devonshire, Harold Macmillan's brother-in-law, who had been treated by Adams at the time of his death. Cullen's supposition that the Attorney-General deliberately sabotaged a trial, which the available evidence showed he wanted to win, to please his political masters, or that Macmillan's family affairs had any bearing on the trial, are dismissed by a later researcher as "ludicrous" and completely unsupported by credible evidence. There is also considerable evidence of negative and prejudicial press coverage of the case. From the start of the Eastbourne Police investigation, in addition to rumours picked up from local residents, journalists had been briefed by the local Chief Constable about the suspicious nature of Mrs Hullett's death and possible links with other deaths. The Daily Mail in particular went so far as to link Bodkin Adams with what had become a murder investigation by stating that the police had interviewed him, and the Daily Mirror added that four other cases of Adams's were being investigated in connection with the Hullett's enquiry. Once the case had been passed to the Metropolitan Police, Percy Hoskins, who had resisted the general press condemnation of Adams, was contacted by an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on the basis that what had emerged from the Eastbourne investigation