Amelia Dyer was tried before Justice Henry Hawkins at the Old Bailey in 1896, just two years before the judge retired. His judicial career spanned more than twenty years and he himself is an interesting topic to explore, not least because he gained a reputation as a ‘hanging judge’ - in other words, disinclined to recommend mercy in capital cases. When Hawkins died in 1907, the Times ran an extensive obituary, which informed the reader that 'it cannot be said that Hawkins was a great judge [...] and he was sometimes charged with undue severity in criminal cases'. The obituary continued in somewhat more generous terms by describing Hawkins as 'acute and penetrating', before remarking that the memoirs Hawkins had had published in 1904 were 'two bulky volumes' which could not be said to 'constitute a valuable contribution to legal literature'. It continues that, 'the book, in fact, hardly deserves to be called amusing, for many of the stories, told at...