Case for the Prosecution: A Biography of Sir Archibald Bodkin

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Sir Archibald Bodkin, one of the most famous counsel of his day, was a Public Prosecutor who saw that the public got its pound of flesh. His apprenticeship for the post of Director of Public prosecutions was arduous.

A few years after his call to the Bar he became a junior Treasury counsel and for the next 28 years, was concerned with many of the important criminal prosecutions at the Old Bailey and elsewhere. He conducted the cases against the East End "anarchists" two of whom defied police and troops in the famous Sidney Street siege.

Another of his cases was that of George Joseph Smith, the "brides-in-the-bath" murderer of at least four women, and he was entrusted with the prosecution of most of the spies for Germany caught in Britain in the first world war.

After his appointment as Director of Public Prosecutions, Bodkin assembled the cases against such notorious murderers as Armstrong, the Welsh poisoner, Browneand Kennedy, the killers of an Essex policeman, Vaquier, the "Blue Anchor" poisoner and Mahon and Thorne, who murdered and cut up their mistresses. He was also a vital witness at the Savidge enquiry which investigated goings-on in Hyde Park.

Among the personalities who flit through the pages of this book are William Whiteley the shopkeeper who was shot by his supposed illegitimate son; Leopold de Rothschild, who narrowly escaped assassination; and Horatio Bottomley, whose downfall Bodkin planned. This is an absorbing story of the most able and deadly prosecutor ever to present the case for the prosecution.