Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - July - 2007 Issue
Law and Legal History from the Lawbook Exchange
Scandals made popular reading even in 1719.
Item 105 has a most unusually named author: Some Observations Upon the Late Tryals of Sir George Wakeman, Corker and Marshall, &c. By Tom Tickle-foot the Taborer, Late Clerk to Justice Clodpate. I'm going to guess Tom Tickle-foot was a penname. By the way, a "taborer" is one who plays the tabor, a small drum associated with the fife and drum. This book was a 1679 satire of the "Popish Plot," a hoax perpetrated by an Anglican clergyman in 1678 to stir up anti-Catholic sentiments among the British. $450.
Item 29 is the 1822 first American edition of A Treatise on the Law of Idiocy and Lunacy, one of the first books written on this subject. This is actually not a book about the law in general, but about the treatment of the insane in criminal cases. $750.
Item 97 is an interesting look at race relations in America in 1950, a few years before the famous Brown vs. Board of Education case would order desegregation of schools in 1954. The title is States' Laws on Race and Color...edited by Pauli Murray. It is a comprehensive look at state laws concerning segregation, miscegenation, alien owned land, Indians, Japanese and Chinese Americans. The book was prepared to advance the cause of civil rights. $125.
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