Many solicitors will have read the 1889 comic novel Three Men In a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, but they may not know that if it had not been such a success, then Jerome would have continued with his training to become a solicitor.

You reviewed the National Theatre's revival of 'The Voysey Inheritance', which, although a late Victorian melodrama based on the misuse of clients' money by a family firm of solicitors, sadly has many modern parallels (see [2006] Gazette, 4 May, 26).


In his autobiography, Jerome reports: 'I was with a Mr Anderson Rose in Arundel Street, Strand. He was a dear old gentleman. In the office, we all loved him. And so did his clients, until soon after his death, when their feelings began to change. I fancy that Granville Barker must have known him, or heard of him: and used him for "The Voysey Inheritance".'


It is a sad indictment of our profession that over the last 100 years history has so often repeated itself, and that most weeks the Gazette reveals examples of fraud on clients.


Peter Wilson, Hadens, Walsall and membership secretary of the Jerome K Jerome Society