Typed copy, with annotations, of depositions in the case Rex v. Mir Anwaruddin, heard at the Central Criminal Court, 1918, following a libel action against Horatio Bottomley. For 'Director of Public Prosecutions [Sir Charles Willie Mathews]'.

Author: 
[Mir Anwaruddin (b. 1888); Sir Charles Willie Mathews (1850-1920), Director of Public Prosecutions; Horatio Bottomley (1860-1933), proprietor and editor of the magazine John Bull, and fraudster]
Publication details: 
Headed 'Central Criminal Court, 25th June, 1918.' [The trial took place on 2 July 1918.]
£450.00
SKU: 10767

Folio, [i] + 49 pp. Text clear and complete. A mimeographed typescript, with text and manuscript annotations. Clear and complete, on aged and creased paper. Typed in bottom right-hand corner of covering title: 'Director of Public Prosecutions.' Anwarudding was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1913, and between that year and 1918 his marital difficulties caused him to appear before thirteen different High Court Judges in eight different courts. The various legal actions in which he was involved (the subject of eight reports in The Times) are of great importance in the history of the relations between western and islamic law, as set out in Gail Savage's 'More than One Mrs. Mir Anwaruddin: Islamic Divorce and Christian Marriage in Early Twentieth-Century London' (Journal of British Studies, Vol.47, No.2, 2 April 2008). Although Savage does refer to this case (for which see The Times, 3 July 1918; with Anwaruddin's unsuccessful appeal against his conviction reported on 27 July 1918), her article does not make use of the present item, which contains depositions from nineteen individuals. The present action, in which Anwaruddin was accused of perjury, arose out of his testimony in an unsuccessful libel action by him against Bottomley, John Bull and Odhams Press. The deposing parties in the present document include members of Anwaruddin's wife's family the Hudd's; the woman he attempted to make his second wife, Violet Louisa Ling; police officers, two shorthand reporters and a handwriting expert. The document ends with the 'Prisoner's Statement': 'I plead an emphatic Not Guilty.' It is annotated throughout in two hands, possibly those of the lawyers representing him in his appeal against conviction, 'Mr. Abinger and Mr. Abdul Majid' (Times, 27 July 1918).