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LONDON LEGAL LETTER. APRIL, 1903. ECCENTRIC causes resulting in litigation seem to move in cycles. One of our chancery courts has been occupied every day for over a fortnight on the trial of an action brought by a young man who claims to have been persuaded to yield to spirit influences manifested through the writings of a planchette board, whereas in fact the board was animated by the very material hands of parties who, it is alleged, directed it to advise the young man to make an irrevocable settlement of all his not in considerable fortune in their favor. The set tlement was made and the action is now brought to set it aside, on the ground of un due influence. The learned judge has re served his judgment. In the meantime, in a Berlin court we have the spectacle of Frau Roche on trial for perpetrating sixty-one frauds and attempting nine others by alleged spiritualistic manifestations. In her case she claimed to be able to communicate to her devotees messages from kindred in the spirit world, and to invoke the shades of statesmen and heroes and philosophers who departed the life centuries ago. She not only con veyed messages, but she materialized flowers and fruit as presents and offerings from these personages to their awe-stricken admirers. The medium in Berlin has had the advantage of being able to call scores of witnesses to testify to her supernatural powers, and among them a judge of a court of appeals and the widow of a distinguished statesman. It will be interesting to note whether these two causes cclbbrcs will be followed by others of a like nature in other parts of the civilized world. In the same way, and doubtless by the suggestions that come from the publicity given to notable trials, an epidemic of grue

some crimes is occurring in this country. Within a month past we have witnessed the conviction of a woman for the curious of fence of losing, or attempting to lose, in fants under the seats of railway carriages; the execution of two women from the same neighborhood in London for making way with infants committed to their care; the execution of a fiend who made a business of buying out small shopkeepers and then mur dering them to get possession of their effects, in the latest case dismembering the bodies of his victims, which included the wife and young child, and burying the fragments in his door-yard, and the conviction of one Klosowski, or Chapman, who tried to pass himself off as an American, for poisoning three women with whom he lived in marital relations. And now the police are investigating the details of a crime charged against a man, who, after living with a lady of over fifty years of age, of good so cial connections, in a lowly moated house in Essex, is said to have murdered her and de posited her remains in the ancient moat which surrounds his house. His alleged crime was brought to light by his apprehen sion for the forgery of a small cheque upon her banking account. It is charged that in the three or four years which have elapsed since his disappearance he has forged orders on. her bankers and stockbrokers by which he obtained possession of her fortune of about £6,000. In none of these cases, except the last, was there any temptation which could have induced a sane man to commit murder, and the occurrences are, therefore, all the more interesting to sociologist and criminologist. The present state of public indignation against the absence of laws restricting alien