Poison-pen letter

Miss Theresa Samuels . . . is accused by the Post Office authorities of sending scurrilous letters to young women whose engagements to marry had been publicly announced. . . . Those who received the poison pen letters were not willing to court the notoriety that would follow the prosecution of the case.

A retired academic was the author of a poison-pen letter campaign that brought 12 years of fear to a North Yorkshire village, a court was told yesterday. Dr James Forster . . . was alleged to have branded one villager a prostitute and sent the 13-year-old daughter of the parish clerk a copy of a pornographic magazine.