Sir, – Frank McNally’s interesting Irishman’s Diary on an 1904 insurance fraud case (February 21st) omitted one of the great legal quips. When a witness stated that she could not hear a conversation between the laid-out “corpse” and the fraudulent claimant, Justice Swifte retorted, “She could scarcely understand as it must have been carried on in a dead language”. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK CALLAN,
Portmarnock,
Co Dublin.