A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
DOW STREET always has been, and no doubt always will be, the most famous police-court in the world. At this moment it is doubly denuded. The death of the Chief Magistrate, Sir Robert Dummett, last week came just a fortnight before his senior colleague, Mr. T. W. Fry, whose term of service has been twice prolonged, was to retire finally Mr. Fry, whose career has been long and singularly conscientious, will not sit after the end of next week. Mr. Bertrand Watson is to succeed him, but the new Chief Magistrate is not yet appointed. No one has anything like a prescriptive claim to the position, but it is obvious that Mr. Harold McKenna, who has sat at Bow Street since 1936, after competent service at Greenwich, Lambeth and Marylebone, must be seriously considered. His outstanding qualities are sympathy, common-sense and fairmindedness—not bad ingredients to combine, in a Metropolitan Magistrate, with a sound knowledge of law. If he decided to draw on Bow Street itself for the Chief Magistracy the Home Secretary would be taking a reasonable, and quite certainly a popular, course.
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