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Sir: Theodore Dalrymple’s good sense seems to have deserted him in glossing over the seriousness of the charges against Professors Meadow and Southall (‘In defence of David Southall’, 6 September). He mischievously suggests that the sole complaint against Professor Meadow is that he deployed a misleading statistic in the trial that led to Sally Clark’s conviction and life sentence for murdering her two sons. But his authority and reputation as an expert in such cases was based on a theory that was built on a circular argument.
Dr Dalrymple’s similarly benign view of Professor Southall is at odds with the verdict of the General Medical Council (‘your conduct is so serious it is fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered medical practitioner’) after hearing, inter alia, of his wrongfully accusing a mother of murdering her son by asphyxiating him with his belt. Dr Dalrymple might usefully have drawn attention to the hazards of the professor’s favoured diagnosis of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy whose criteria are so elastic they could apply to most medical conditions whose explanation is not clear.
Over the last decade the medical advocacy of the contentious theories of Meadow and Southall has resulted in a systematic miscarriage of justice in the Family and Criminal Courts without precedent in British legal history. That does not seem a cause worth defending when with a little diligent research Dr Dalrymple could have heard for himself the stories of any number of parents who have been robbed of their families and good name as a result of these theories.
James LeFanu
London SW4
Just our Lidl joke
Sir: Dot Wordsworth wonders (Mind your language, 13 September) why foreign restaurants don’t consult a native speaker before publishing a menu in English. I have the same question about The Spectator and attempted puns in German. Jonathan Burge (Letters, 13 September) ends with the battle cry ‘Vorvarts Lidl!’ Whoops! Sind Sie doof, oder was? The correct spelling is ‘vorwärts’ meaning ‘forwards’. Sadly that’s not all: for anyone who speaks German your little/Lidl wordplay doesn’t quite work as the retailer’s name is pronounced ‘leedle’, as in Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It is only in the UK that everyone mispronounces it.
Gareth Walters
Southborough, Kent
Village cretins
Sir: The disease and deformity described by William Clarke (Letters, 13 September) were most likely the result of chronic iodine deficiency common in southern Europe, especially the Alps. It was not unusual in the 19th century for the inhabitants of whole villages to be affected by cretinism — small stature, the inability to walk and severe learning difficulty. Artificially adding traces of iodine to food such as salt resolved the problem in the last century. However, the term cretin persisted as a term of abuse for someone stupid.
Dr Timothy C. Dowd
Knayton, North Yorkshire
Liberal regime
Sir: Ross Clark’s complaint about Tyne and Wear Metro (Labour’s punishment freaks are hounding honest citizens, 6 September) is unfair and overstated.
First, you can book through travel on the Metro from any station in the UK. Clark’s problem was that he was sold the wrong train ticket in the first place. Second, there is a change machine at Newcastle Central Metro and our ticket machines do give change. And finally, Clark should know that Newcastle City Council is Liberal Democrat-controlled, before he takes his boycott of the ‘Labour’ regime there too far.
Huw Lewis
Head of Communications, Nexus (operators of the Tyne and Wear Metro), Newcastle Upon Tyne
Sir: Sarah Davies of Hull, whose plight Ross Clark reported on, was relatively lucky that she could refer her case to court. The DVLA cheerily hands out fines of £80 for trivial errors, with no right of appeal. Those caught out by this illegal scam should complain, via their MP, to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 12 of the Bill of Rights 1689 (‘all fines before conviction are illegal and void’) and the principle of ‘Nemo judex in sua causa’ apply.
Iain Crawford
Monmouth, Wales
Joining the Dots
Sir: Following Dot Wordsworth’s article on pronouncing surnames (Mind Your Language, 6 September), what about Pritchard — how many people with the name rhyme it with Richard, and how many emphasise the second syllable? Should Barnard be ‘Barnud’ or ‘Bah-nahd’? And should Irvine be ‘Er-vine’ or ‘Ervin’, like the Scottish town?
David W. Lloyd
Harlow, Essex
Long reigns
Sir: There is an even more obvious example of a long-reigning monarch than Emperor Francis-Joseph (Letters, 13 September). Louis XIV was King of France from 1643 to 1715.
C.D.C. Armstrong
Belfast, Northern Ireland
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