[2][8] Along with Lord Hardinge and Sir Mackenzie Chalmers he conducted an official inquiry into the origin and causes of the "Sinn Fein Rebellion" of 1916.

[1][9] Notable cases at which Shearman presided were the trial of Harold Greenwood at Carmarthen in 1920; of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters; of the murderers of General Henry Wilson at the Central Criminal Court in 1922;[1] and of John Walter Knowles, also in 1922, for the "Tipton Catastrophe", a factory explosion which killed 19 teenaged girls, and which Shearman described as the worst case of manslaughter he had dealt with.

[10] His role in the Thompson-Bywaters trial has been subject to controversy because of the prejudice he showed towards Edith Thompson, who had been charged as a co-conspirator in the murder of her husband by her lover, Freddy Bywaters.

In his memoirs journalist and politician, Beverley Baxter, referred to it as only being "in a nightmare that judicial killing was ever countenanced by a supposedly civilised people".

[12] Shearman was unequivocal about his views of the young woman when he told the jurors during his summing up (he would only call them all gentlemen despite there being two women on the jury) what he thought about Thompson's adultery: "I am certain that you, like any other right-minded person, will be filled with disgust at such a notion.

[14] The Burlington Magazine noted that the collection focusses on "themes with a clear relationship to comfortable middle-class life .. the satirical element never becoming obtrusive, and in the Lautrec having a distinctly moralising tendency.