BREACH OF BOND

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 7

BREACH OF BOND

Haddon Sent to Prison CLAIM TO ROYAL BLOOD London, January 17. Clarence Gay Gordon Haddon was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for breach of a three years bond to refrain from “uttering, while knowing the contents thereof, a letter demanding money from the King with menaces and without reasonable or probable cause.” Haddon, who is -14, allegedly repeated his claim to be the late Duke of Clarence’s son. He told the secretary of the South Islington Conservative Association that he wanted financial recognition; otherwise he would sell his story to the foreign Press and parade London with a sandwich board. On' his trial at the Old Bailey in January on a charge of “uttering while knowing the contents thereof, a letter demanding money from the King with menaces and without reasonable or probable cause.” Haddon, described as an engineer, pleaded guilty under extreme provocation, and was bound over for three years under two sureties of £lOO each, to refrain from making or affirming similar statements. The judge said that one of the reasons for taking this course was that the person against whom intolerable threats had been, made had expressed a desire through the Attorney-General to be in no way Vindictive. The Attorney-General said that the subject of the charges was an obsession on the part of Haddon that he was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Clarence. Haddon claimed that he had been born in London on September 28, 1890. The Duke of Clarence went on an Indian tour in November, 1889, ending in 1890. The documents showed that Haddon’s mother bore three children, including a boy in 1899 not to her then husband, but to Lieutenant Kogers. Haddon’s mother was addicted to drink. Because she had in her mind that she had been secretly married to the Duke of Clarence, she brought up the bov in that belief. Throughout his life Haddon had found himself pursued by notoriety and mockery. “Unless you wish to end in a mad-' house,” said the judge, addressing the accused, “the sooner you depart from this baseless belief the better. It seems that it has rested on you as a curse.”