A very unusual case was heard on Thursday before the
Ex- chequer Court. Dr. Williams, the well-known chest doctor, attended the Earl of St. Maur in September last for a tumour in the throat, which stopped his breathing. It was necessary to per- form the operation of tracheotomy, but it failed, and the Earl expired in great agony. His mother, the Duchess of Somerset, who was present at the final scene, appears to have been possessed with the idea that Dr. Williams had ordered the operation, which was, of course, performed by a surgeon, not to cure the Earl, but to justify an opinion of his own as to the seat of disease. Frantic at the loss of her only remaining son—his brother, Lord E. St. Maur, having been killed in Bombay by a bear—she cir- culated to her friends a lithographed letter, giving a minute and extraordinarily effective account of the scene, accusing Dr. Williams of malpractice and calling him a "hypocritical murderer." Hence the action. In Court the counsel for the Duchess withdrew in the fullest and most earnest manner all imputations on Dr. Williams and offered an apology, which was accepted, and a verdict recorded with damages of only £5 5s. It would seem clear that the Duchess, frenzied with grief, honestly believed her own charges, but we question if the verdict should have been a nominal one. Every doctor is not so well protected by his history and his circumstances as Dr. Williams.
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