[ James Beresford Atlay, writer on the law and crime. ] Two Autograph Letters Signed (both 'J. B. Atlay') to Sir Richard [ Harington ], the first regarding the Hereford Mappa Mundi, and the second the murder trial of Edmund Walter Pook.

Both items in good condition. ONE: 3pp., 12mo. After a reference to 'Mr. Lang' he turns to the Hereford Mappa Mundi (his father was Bishop of Hereford): 'I am very glad you were interested in the introductory Essay to the "Mappa," and the commentary renders it easy to work out the whole thing: I once gave a lecture on it in my youth'. (The lecture was given in 1880.) A reference follows to the 'introductory dinner' at Lincoln's Inn of 'Dick' - Harrington's son Richard, the future 12th Baronet - at which he was 'in company with Bosanquet and myself'. TWO: 3pp., 12mo. Regarding the 1871 trial of Edmund Walter Pook for the murder of Jane Maria Clousen, he writes to thank Harington ffor 'taking so much trouble in telling me your recollections of the Popk case which will be of great assistance to me if I come to right [sic] his trial, which however will not be just as the Editor of the Cornhill has sent me down to Courvoisier. I shall try and get him to let me do Pook next; there is no separate report of the case that I cannot find, but the Times gives it very fully, and the short hand report of the evidence is in the Sessional papers of C. C. C in the Library here.' He believes there to have been 'a good deal of friction' between the judge Sir William Bovill and attorney John Duke Coleridge (later 1st Baron Coleridge), and that 'the evidence seems to have completely melted away'. Atlay can 'just remember being excited about the trial as a private school boy.'