A lawyer would have felt especially fidgetty, while these facts were being elicited. The questions were put in an undecided rambling manner, and were so interrupted by half-made remarks from the jurors and other parties in the room, that it was a wonder how the report of the proceedings, which appeared in the morning newspapers, could have been so cleverly cleared as it was of the chaff from which it was winnowed. One or two circumstances occurred during this time which tended to throw over the whole affair the air of an ill-played farce. At an interesting point of the evidence, the door was opened, and a scream from a female voice announced ‘Please sir, the beadle’s wanted!’ There were four gentlemen sitting on a horse-hair sofa close behind some of the jury, with whom more than once they entered into conversation, doubtless about the case in hand. The way in which the coroner took notice of this breach of every judisprudential rule, was extremely characteristic: he said, in effect, that there was, perhaps, no actual harm in it, but it _might_ be objected to—the parties conversing might be relatives of the accused. In fact, he mildly insinuated that such unprivileged communications might warp the jurymen’s judgments—that’s all! After the coroner had summed up, the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against the husband. The Queen’s representative then retired, and so did the jury and the beadle; a little extra business was done at the bar of the ‘Two Spies,’ and, to use a reporter’s pet phrase, ‘the proceedings terminated.’ It is far from our desire, in describing this particular inquest, in any way to disparage—supposing anything we have said can be construed into disparagement—any person or persons concerned in it directly or remotely. Our wish is to point out the exceeding looseness, informality, and difficulty of ensuring sound judgment, which the system occasions. Indeed we were told by a competent authority that the proceedings at the Old Drury and ‘Two Spies’ taverns, formed an orderly and superior specimen of their class.