A BOLD ADVENTURESS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3183, 10 September 1881, Page 4

A BOLD ADVENTURESS.

The plaintiff in the case of Wilberforce v. Philp, which, after amusing the court for several days, suddenly and ignorniniously collapsed, is certainly entitled to a respectable place in the gallery of celebrated adventuresses. The plaintiff's own account of herself was simple enough, She was reared in San Francisco, had been to Paris, and on the outbreak of the Turco-Russian conflict tfas deputed by a benevolent committee at Indiannpolis to go to the sent of war, and help to sneeonr the wounded as a member of a Red Cross Society. According to her own statement she visited Sofia, Plevna and Constantinople, though Mr Murphy, her counsel, mentioned one or two facts which throw doubt on that assertion. On the cessation of the war, she returned to England, and attempted to establish,in the most benevolent manner in the world, a society " to supply food and clothing and protection to the poor children in the East, whom she had seen Buffering from the effects of the war." Miss Wilberforee " opened a fund." She did more. She opened a shop and dispatched tinned food and secondhand clothes to the little sufferers in the East, and she induced various philanthropic individuals to take a share in her enterprise. But the Charity Organisation Society came down upon her, and denounced her roundly as a " swindler.'" This was Tery painful, and the young lady then went to Paris, where she made the acquaintance of Dr. Pliilp, a very old gentleman, the father of the defendant in the suit. This Dr. PhiJp, there is no doubt, adopted the clever American girl as hw daughter, and at first Captain and Mrs Philp—his son and daughter-in-law— seemed pleased with the arrangement. The pleasure did not last long however, for Captain Philp became suspicious of the young lady, and ordered her out of his father's house ; whereupon I he spirited young woman refused to budge an inch, and actually stood a siege—so she says —of twenty-five days in her own bedroom, with poor old Dr. Philp lying dangerously ill in some other apartment. The " cause of aatiou" simply was that Miss Wilberforce aocused Captain Philp of slander, inasmuch as he had told the doctor that he had seen her administering poison to Dr. Philp in order to hasten his end —a statement which Captain Philp denied ever having made. A case may be said to be perfectly hopeless when the counsel engaged in it think fit to retire, and refuse to have anything more to do with it. This was what Mr Murphy, Q.C., and his junior, together with the solicitor, all three representing the plaintiff, felt bound to do; but in reality Miss Wilberforce's case was utterly over and done for long before Mr Murphy threw up his brief. It looked far too plausible to be quite sound even when the plaintiff was telling her own story to her own counsel, and it broke down completely under the raking broadsides of questions which were poured into her on crossexamiration. Amazing and perfectly unaccountable discrepancies turned up between the statements of the interesting plaintiff and the actual facts as they were known to have existed. Then she contradicted and corrected herself over and over again, but the corrections only served to leave the case more suspicious than before. But the most mysterious part of the plaintiff's narrative consisted of communications between her and two persons on the other side of the Atlantic. She had, she alleged, a trustee residing in Indianapolis, a Mr Perry Morton, who wrote letters to her, and she also seems to have corresponded with a " New York detective ;" but the curious thing is that neither the trustee's nor the detective's latters could be discovered anywhere : only " copies" of them wore forthcoming. The rnysterioixs man, the New York detective, acted as the guide, philosopher, and friend to the persecuted Miss Wilberforce. He deeply sympathised with her in her controversy with Captain Philp, and he evidently did not think much of " the Old Country" for not at once welcoming Miss Wilberforco as an angel in disguise. He even ventured on the extraordinary statement that here, in England, "it was easy to fasten any offence against law or morality on a young and good-looking woman who leaves her own country, and has neither family, friends, nor much money." The trustee was even more effusive in his sympathy, and, though he lived in America, wrote in the following strain about Captain Philp: — " This fool is so hardened that he concocts hatred, and no honourable conduct can meet his machinations. Even in the army he was regarded as a mean twaddler, given to row and debt." Miss Wilberforce produced copies of letters addressed to this socalled trustee, in which she explained her relations to Dr. Philp. "My new papa," ehe writes, " is seventy-nine years of age, but is as much a boy as I am a girl. We climb nap the mountains like two happy and careless goats." And she goes on to remark, •with guileless innocence, " He has given his eon a large estate. Why should I not devote myself to this almost childless old man ?" It seems very probable that Miss Wilberforce actually contemplated matrimony with the venerable gentleman -who had adopted her, for we find her going down to Bichmond in his company, and then making particular inquiries as to " who the person is -who manages marriage affairs at Richmond." " I myself formed the opinion," said Mr Justice Field, "that the alleged detective's letter was a ■wilful and grose fabrication for the purpose of carrying out an infamoui fraud." When

a judge trying a case expresses so strong an opinion as this there is little more to be said about the -matter. It was not, however, on the dot; • 's letter that Mr Murphy abandoneu ihe case ; it was without regard to the supposed trustee—Mr Morton, residing in Indianapolis. Inquiries which had been made showed that there was a Mr Perry Morton in that city, but that he had been dead some considerable time ; consequently, the letters hr. was said to have addressed to Miss Wilberforce were proved never to have beon written, and, as we have stated, the case suddenly and completely collapsed.