Maxwell Joseph Hall Turner (1907–1960) was a Queen's Counsel and judge of the Mayor's and City of London Court, specifically a Commissioner on the Bench of the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, the "Old Bailey".
In addition to his advocacy, Turner was the joint editor of Archbold’s Pleading, Evidence & Practice in Criminal Cases With the Statutes, Precedents of Indictments, etc.
He had met her 15 years previously at a gramophone dance at the Turner household, a connexion vitalised through his older brother, dramatist John Hastings Turner, a professional acquaintance of Drake's actor friend Marie Tempest, the promoter of the actors' union, Equity.
[3] He was counsel for the Crown in a number of high-profile cases, including those of the Clapham Common murder trial of five youths[4] and the Notting Hill serial killer and necrophile John Christie,[5] both in 1953, and that of the German petty thief Guenther Podola, who was the last person executed in Great Britain for murdering a police officer, in 1959.
He was diagnosed with liver cancer the following year but dismissed the pain as indigestion; he was kept unaware of his true condition by doctors at Drake's request.