Fraudsters and Charlatans (38 page)

Coburn saw no reason to inform the shareholders in G.H. Druce Ltd about the existence of Charles Edgar, but when, as was inevitable, they found out, he reassured them that George's nephew was illegitimate. He failed to mention that counsel's opinion had been sought on the matter and it had been confirmed in July 1906 that there was no proof to support this allegation.

A critical development in George's claim was the emergence of two new witnesses, both of whom had read about the case in the newspapers. English-born Miss Robinson, a stout middle-aged lady who was resident in New Zealand, had written to say that she had once acted as secretary to the Duke of Portland, having been introduced to him by Charles Dickens. Not only had the Duke told her about the imposture, but she had recorded his words in a diary that was still in her possession. Irish-born Robert Caldwell, living in New York, whose letter to Phillips had mysteriously disappeared, had met with a better reception from George Druce and his advisers. He claimed he had known the Duke both as the Duke and as Druce, and had actually assisted with the mock burial, obtaining the lead with which to weight the coffin. Edmund Kimber, George's London solicitor, went to America to interview Caldwell and returned to report to the committee of shareholders that he was satisfied that his story was true. Both of these individuals were brought to England, Miss Robinson arriving with a younger lady companion, Miss Maude O'Neill. Immediately there was a new sensation, as Miss Robinson complained to the police that valuable documents, including letters from Charles Dickens and the Duke of Portland, had been stolen from her trunk during the voyage. Extensive investigations were made, but no evidence could be found to justify her claim.

The attack of George and his solicitor on the evidence of Thomas Druce's death was now simplified by the fact that William Blasson had died in 1904 and Young, Shaw and Catherine Bayly were old and infirm. The claimant's resources would never be sufficient to take on the financial might of the Portland dukedom, but there was an easier target. Herbert Druce had both sworn an affidavit and testified in court that his father had died on 28 December 1864 and that he had seen him in his coffin. If George's claim was true, then Herbert Druce had committed perjury. George therefore instituted proceedings against Herbert Druce. The case would probably cost several thousand pounds, but he had no doubts as to where he could get the money.

In June 1907 an informal meeting of the shareholders of G.H. Druce Ltd was advised that the case was now so strong that the onus of proof was no longer on George but on his opponents. George's descent from Thomas Druce and Elizabeth Crickmer was beyond doubt, they had a witness to the fake burial, and it only remained to prove that Druce and the Duke were the same man. It was now implied that the young future Duke had commenced his imposture by the time he was 16 and had lied about both his name and his age on his marriage to Elizabeth Crickmer. Dazzled by the promise of millions, George and his associates did not think this improbable. Coburn told the excited throng that he had spent five years gathering evidence, and that he honestly believed not only that G.H. Druce was the grandson of the 5th Duke of Portland but also that he would be able to establish the point in court. He was greeted with loud cheering. Only one more thing was required, George told them: more money for the forthcoming trial. He was willing to offer 3,000 £1 shares to existing shareholders at £2 a share. Any not so taken up would go on the market, where he believed they would sell at £4. The meeting closed with the shareholders expressing their unabated confidence in his claim. A series of articles later published as pamphlets in which Mrs Hamilton confirmed the Duke's imposture was a key part of the campaign to persuade the public to part with their money. One article was by Coburn, but the rest, published under the name of George Hollamby Druce, were written by Kenneth George Henderson, manager of the
Idler
magazine and grandson of Frances Izard. The question of establishing identity was then an uncertain science.
Was Druce the Duke?
presented a host of clues to convince the public. There was one admitted photo of the Duke and also one of Druce, and the pamphlet declared that persons who had known the Duke had picked out Druce's picture as a lifelike picture of the Duke, while business associates of Druce identified a photo of the Duke as Thomas Druce. The photographic evidence would have been more convincing but for the fact that the Duke was cleanshaven, apart from side whiskers, while Druce had a substantial bushy beard and moustache. It was, however, no great leap of imagination to suggest that the eccentric Duke had specially made false whiskers that he wore when masquerading as Druce. Other ‘evidence' stated that the two men were similar in height, build and manners, and both suffered from a hereditary skin disease. The most dubious section was the one headed ‘Habits of life generally', which listed, among other things, ‘secrecy and reserve, subterranean wanderings, passion for building and making alterations to buildings, mysterious journeyings, and peculiar style of closed carriage', all of which may well have been true of the Duke, but there was no evidence at all that these traits were also those of Thomas Druce.
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Some research had been done to identify where the Duke and Thomas Druce were at different periods, in an effort to show that blanks in the history of one could be explained by activity of the other. The Duke's Army career, which coincided with Druce bringing up a family in Bury St Edmunds, was an inconvenience explained away by suggesting that it was an appointment on paper only.

By the autumn of 1907 most of the shares in G.H. Druce Ltd had been sold, but by then two more companies had been launched by John Sheridan Sheridan, the Druce-Portland Company in October, with the object of promoting George's claims, and The New Druce-Portland Company in November, which acquired Sheridan's commission notes. If George was successful, the holder of each 5
s
share would receive £16.

On 25 October 1907 Herbert Druce was summoned before magistrate Mr Plowden of the Marylebone Police Court, and some of the best legal minds in the country appeared in a case where ‘laughter in court' was virtually the rule of the day. The prosecution was led by the brilliant Llewellyn Atherley-Jones KC MP. His formidable opponents were Horace Avory KC and Sir Charles Matthews KC. The audience in the crowded court included the 6th Duke of Portland. Anna Maria Druce took no part in the case. She was by now an inmate of the London County Asylum.

Atherley-Jones, emphasising Herbert Druce's continued refusal to permit the coffin to be opened, made the powerful point that, if it was shown that the funeral had been spurious, there would be an intestacy so far as Thomas Druce was concerned, Herbert Druce would have to surrender all the property he had received under his father's will and George Druce would then succeed to the whole of Thomas Druce's property. He made no mention of Charles Edgar Druce, and it may well have been that at that point he had not been advised either of that person's existence or of his true relationship to George.

Mr Avory asked for an adjournment of two weeks to prepare his defence, and one of the first things he wanted to examine was Miss Robinson's diary, which she had given to Edmund Kimber. On 29 October Herbert's solicitors, Messrs Freshfields, wrote to Kimber to make an appointment to view the diary. Kimber replied that the diary had been returned to Miss Robinson, who had been subpoenaed to produce it in court, and he could not produce the original until she went into the witness box, but would be happy to provide a copy. Freshfields pointed out that the magistrate had said that the defence should be able to inspect the diary, and on 1 November Kimber replied with some disturbing news: the diary had been stolen. Miss Robinson had gone shopping with it in her handbag. While she was looking in a shop window, a man had come up and told her that there was a spider on her shoulder. She was distracted and the man disappeared with her bag. Kimber added that this was the sixth theft of important documents, and alleged that they had been carried out by agents employed by Freshfields's clients.

When the hearing resumed on 8 November, Avory boldly read the correspondence in court. Atherley-Jones dissociated himself from the unwise allegation, and Kimber was obliged to apologise. Avory must have known he had already won. He was too experienced not to realise that important documents going mysteriously missing at a critical moment, and wild allegations of theft, showed a very serious weakness in the prosecution's case. ‘You at the proper time will know what is the proper inference to be drawn from this proceeding,' he said.
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Next, 71-year-old Robert Caldwell took the stand, amid considerable excitement. He was a brazen and careless liar, happy to tell any story that suited him (as long as the people he mentioned were dead), unconcerned that some of his claims contradicted those of Anna Maria and utterly oblivious to the fact that many of his statements could be disproved by official records. He told the court that as a young man he had suffered from a disease that had made his nose bulbous and unsightly. Arriving in England in 1855, he consulted Dr Morell Mackenzie, the renowned specialist, and was told that his condition was incurable. Having heard of a gentleman in India who could help him, he travelled there and met British Army Captain Arthur Wellesley Joyce, who not only cured him but gave him the secret of the cure. (A later interview with Joyce's daughter revealed that Wellesley Joyce was a Limerick man, who had never been to India.) Returning to England, he again called on Morell Mackenzie, who invited him to apply the cure to a poor man, which he did. It was through the specialist that he was introduced to the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, early in 1864.

The Duke, claimed Caldwell, had suffered from a similar malady, and so he was invited to commence treatment, which was carried out sometimes at Welbeck Abbey and sometimes at Druce's bazaar in London, where he was introduced to Druce's wife and children and stayed as a guest. In 1864, at the Duke's direction, he had employed a carpenter to construct a coffin. On 27 December he bought about 200lb of sheet lead, which was placed in the coffin, and a funeral took place on the following day, a magnificent affair with fifty mourning coaches filled with old retainers of the Duke from Welbeck. Caldwell had no difficulty in recognising the photographs of the Duke and Druce that were produced in court as being of the same man, adding, to the amusement of the spectators, that he had seen the Duke put on a false beard.

When Avory began his cross-examination, he revealed that the Druce-Portland affair was not the first scandalous mystery in which Caldwell had been involved. In November 1878 the body of Alexander Turney Stewart, a multimillionaire who had died two years earlier, was stolen from his family crypt in St Mark's Churchyard, New York. The newspaper-reading public was kept amused for several months as detectives spread their investigations over most of the eastern United States. In 1880 Judge Henry Hilton, the administrator of Stewart's estate, announced that he had paid a ransom and recovered the remains, which he had had interred at Garden City Cathedral.

After Hilton's death in 1899 Caldwell had approached the
New York Herald
, offering to sell it a story for $10,000 in which he accused Judge Hilton of forging Stewart's will and stealing the remains himself. He claimed to be a trustee of twenty-seven compromising letters that had passed between Judge Hilton and Cornelia, Stewart's widow, who had died in 1886.

Avory suggested that, once the
New York Herald
had refused to purchase the original story, Caldwell, popularly known as ‘the great American affidavit maker',
¹³
had taken it away and ‘cooked it and served it up again'
¹⁴
with embellishments (that is, forged letters), which Caldwell hotly denied.

Caldwell was obliged to backtrack on his claim to have seen Morell Mackenzie in 1855 (Mackenzie, born in 1837, had opened his clinic in 1862), saying he had been given a recommendation to him in 1857 and carried it about for several years. ‘Waiting for him to grow up, I suppose?' asked Avory.
¹⁵

Avory next tried to discover more about the supposed cure of the poor man.

‘What did you do to his nose?'

‘Ah, you would like to get at that.' (A roar of laughter) ‘You would go into the business yourself if you could.' (More roars of laughter)
¹⁶

Caldwell claimed he had cured two rajahs, who had paid him £5,000 each, while the Duke had paid him £10,000, of which half was for putting the lead in the coffin.

Asked why he had abandoned this remunerative business, Caldwell said that the whole medical faculty were after him for dispensing medicines without being a doctor. ‘You find me a man with a bulbous nose and I'll cure him in a month. That is a fair offer, but I should want £5,000.' (Laughter)
¹⁷

Caldwell had a poor memory for his own lies. When questioned at the adjourned hearing a week later, the two rajahs had become a German and an Italian, and he denied dispensing medicines at all, saying he had removed hair from the Duke's nose and applied an ointment. Avory now led Caldwell into even deeper waters, as he asked him about the living arrangements at the Baker Street Bazaar, since Caldwell had claimed that Druce, his wife and five children all slept and dined there, and they were waited on by eight servants.

‘If there was no bedroom, kitchen nor dining room at Baker Street Bazaar your story must be untrue?' asked Avory, who was clearly aware that the bazaar did not incorporate living accommodation. ‘I throw in the servants too. Supposing there were not any, your story about them must also be untrue?'
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He also challenged Caldwell about the date of the funeral, which had actually taken place on 31 December, and his supposed recollections of Welbeck Abbey, the underground rooms, magnificent 100ft ballroom and picture gallery.