DAIRY SHOW OLYMPIA
OCTOBER 26.
Page
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1954.
BORN 1820 STILL
GOING STRONG
T
"Alf reckons on marrying this Gina Lollobrigida while we're in Lunnun.”
DID THE DUKE LEAD
A
HE Afth Duke of Portland, born 1800, had a bent towards architecture and en- He excavated
gineering.
Welbeck Abbey's famous
undergroun
rooms ur esinte
with
passuged the subways. This industry, by A very rich man who did not wish improvements. spoil the appearance of the niansion and grounds, was regarded as odd. Further- more. he conparted only with servants and the bur. rowing navvies and tied his
trousers
above the unkle with string like one of the Victorians latter. He Was. thought, a damned evcentric recluse.
Portland died a
DOUBLE
LIFE?
World's Strangest Stories, No. 9
For eleven years the astonishing claims to the Portland title and millions were argued in the Courts. Not until 1907 was a satisfactory answer provided to the tale that the fifth Duke had arranged his mock funeral from Baker", Street own
by MICHAEL
GANNON
in
Roine, In
ton
born In 1830, the daughter of Robert Lagos Stewart." Partland, she &Wore, hari actualy propteri marriage to her when he wax a young man. but her equally art tecraile father opposed the Inatch She, elso, had known
him ns Druce.
Under cross-examination the marvellously detailed fabrics of there witnesses' evidenen began to fray.
a
London Express Service
THE DUKE
The nose, in flet, was rather
(9'handsome,
Caldwell was shown to. own a shady reputation in America. Nobody called for the defter could recall the Duke having blocked tunnel from the Duke's owned An unfortunate nose sentence, Mrs Robinson made a town house surely had led
to indeed, it had been
rather full confession
ther passages beneath the shop
that the whole handsome. Sir Morell Macken- Baker nearby
Strust.
thing had been Also, zie, an ominent doctor,
a put-up job, could she had faked evidence in re- whenever the Duke had
only have been 16 when he was »ppeared from
turn for cash. the public ken supposed-at the height of his
She had been there was plenty of evidence of fame to have introduced Cald-
opproached in New Zealand by activity
TC Druce. and well to the Duke.
Mr Druce-the brother, of by
Giorge, the thought-with an Mrs Robinson, the American
initial offer of £23. George, who already referred that her father
refuges, was forced
to admit Lerd Willam. Morilake policeman,
had been
that made an oblique approach
the was not born on a plantation in its £16 bad
the Deep South, and her dead Mrs Annie
yot
the Duke with her demand to husband had served
us a simple shepherd. comi
he opened; deelded to prove Herbert Druce a liar. If Herbert's sworn state
vice-versu
th his
bachelor
Pavy for refusal was that wished to avoid desocration of his father's remains
kit*
in 1879 and was buried at Kemal Green. The title and much
zon
the
the dark dom mille. nowhere Herbert swore he bad been w of his estate ---rec- in the house
have when T.C. died, A £16,000,000)---- hhed scen the corpse Aker distant death. Mis Aunde's story Was
luff and nonsense, and woukl Hic Press and publ
koned to be
pussel tri
kinsman.
Seventeen years inter up pivost leave him be. spoke Mrs
Annie
Marin
with a gleam in her eye. "My son," she declared, "is the rightful Duke."
now
But Mrs Annie continued to
death certificate
...*
and
to
ment that his father had died were untrue, than, he orguel T.C. had continued life as the Duke once more.
On Bank Holiday?
#
Miss Hamilton went to gaol for 18 months at the age of 78. George Hollamby Druce got nway scot free, With great astuteness he avolded going in- to the witness box in the case against Herbert; he got others to speak up for him,
There is still the little matter
Miss Hamilton, 100, was not of the unsigned death certificate so high born as she made out. Her birth certificate,
har
upon which Mrs Annie origin. produced ally pinned her hopes of nobility in court by the defence, showed and fortune. It was pure neef-
folk to have been plain
dent that neither of the doctors Atkinsons of Westmorland. The
who
were present when Druce died (but hnd pired before the trial) put their themselves ex-
signatures
Herbert was charged with Druce, busy little woman bother the court for two years.
The matter of the unsigned perjury, and the trial began at
Marylebone in October, 1907. was telling point
The first winese was Robert Scott, by which she said and it seemed almost
she nddressed the Duke, had certain that she would win the Caldwell, an elderly
Irish- not been adopted by him es an right to open the coffin, and the American, who said ho, read of addition to Cavendish Bentinck revocation of probate of T.C
Mrs Annie's efforts in New
at the time of the alleged court became ship. who Druce's will.
York. Caldwell, known as "the man with the Pla
their evidence was
Portland, she sard, bad led a table litr. In 1835 o Barlier
And then, in February, 1899,
to it, The tunnel from the Duke's town house to the Baker Street shop? Nobody ever fathomed it, but town planning maps
int
me her plans were knocked n-gley. bulbous noso," declared he had something less than the truth. the period showed that any such
he had adopted fale beard and eyebrows and the Thomas Charts Druce. bun #prosperous career as a shop- kesper
13281
Fri Baker Sreet, London,
In 1851 married
Miss
May. Her late husband Walter
หวง
the
Best (rult
was
therefore
marriage, Sidney George
A reporter of The Weekly Dis- patch discovered
แก earllor
rlier mar-
of riage
T.C. Druce to a Miss
This Crickmer. From union, in
this her own
the trus 1810, there was a
Duke, she herself the Dowager male issue. Duchess.
Inevitably the Druce case, like
'Lead in the Coffin' the contemporary
But, it was pointed out, T.C.
In the Druce family vault at
melodrama, duced its long
lost Uncle George. Enter
Druce had died in 1884 and lay George Hollam
cried Mra by Druce, from,
of course, Aus tralia. ar-
Highgate. Not to,
Annie. The Dulce, wearying of
life as a tradesman, had
ranged the demise and a mock
funeral from Baker Street. She
hot actually
The appear- this ance
of
SETI her ducal miner" (actually
father-in-law after his supposed he was 2 car- death-posing as one Dr Harpenter) to claim the ducal robes
1
placed
on
the late
Beal
the
was
and
$1
100 FO
to
was that
as to a date,
of a
the
been introduced to the Duko by And
Morell Macken- gardener who was called in an zie because he Robinson had really been seen
attempt
prove that Mra had with the (Caldwell)
Duke at Welbeck, himself of distressing Questioned
disease dener had spoken of a Bank
Holiday with which Port- Defence counsel thereupon Jand
also brightly observed amicted,
that at the time under discussion the Banke He had known Holiday had not been invented;
Duke
at it was not introduced until 1871. Welbeck and at The gardener, it transpired, was the Baker Street not dishonest
just woolly- Angelf
ho headed. hod The defence produced two 1 actually
bought
trump cards. The case book of the lead, ordered Sir William
comin and cian who attended T.C. Druce
Forgusson, a physi
the the arranged
his
supposed mook funeral
death before
proved to the bench's when His Grace satisfaction that Druc had tired of actually dying when Ferguson being a trades- daw him. And a nurse who had. man,43 years beca
with DrucO OF ht died back:
appeared, at a great age, to Mrs Mary corroborate this fact. Robinson told an A this stage the magistrate equally remark suggested that it might now be advisable for story. As ablo
defendent young girl, she said, she came, Herbert Druce to sanction the to England refuges from the pacing of the grave. After 11 American Civil War--and met years of stubborn resistance T.C. Druce in 1862 at the home Herbert finally agreed.
mer, a lunatie asylum inmate.
The coffins contained only a she had already A photograph alleged to be man's weight in tead.
her at the Duke of Portland in nephew, son,
the role of T. C. Druce, proved too much
for poor
All this she told to the vari
ous authorities
whose permission
and
courts
Mrs
she sought Annie. She retired to a menial for the opening of the coffin. home; the gleam in her eye had,
after all, been a light of mad She seemed, to most people now. to be a little crazy. But public opinion swung in her favour
Uncle George was undoubled when she was able to show that ly a sprig of T.C. Druce's first Bruce's death certificate had marriage. Ho took over where not been signed by a doctor, Mrs Armie had left off, employed different tactics Then, it felt, the opposition took his time in preparing a
of none other than
the late
Charks Dickens... there was a children'e party. Druce put on "a nightdress and playek Grand- but mama. In Little Red Riding and Hood to amuse them.
tho
Exhumation
was
of the cometery company (be- case, 'Not until 1907 dd ho 1o pater, Dickens brought her loud, banda lafur Radha charge
On December 20, 1907, the coffin was examined. In it was found the well-preserved baly Bho returned to America. bf Thomas Charles Druce--not causo exhumation was always to court. und for bustosa) d of one,
over to England to act as out Beven Herbert, Druce, The registered in the meantime three comida correspondents for the against Herbert was withdrewn owner of tho vault, srem panies were floated to finance Dios at Welbeck. This was in the meantime, Calawen had eu more than a bit unreason his venture. They were captial-star the mock funeral. The skipped to America. The like
Ined to the extent of more than Duke was certainly, the
poor Mrs Annie ha D £10,000 by. persons cager is Bruce the had known earlier: mental home
stared f M the sun for TC, and Miss, May, fortune, unice Jurád, by convinding Rabimens had come all the way He had been burn, before, thele szimmented the Duke had been from New Zealand to that: thể
marriage, pai nevertheless, sins, agaten tunneilersweethers – were with might be knownya
⠀ This Herbert, Druce, was also are George's, aventuals good, he admitted 119 to New
••
passage would have been un-
likely on account of sewers.
NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Secret Power
Of A Mad Monk'
Make sure it's
Johnnie Walker
in your glass
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