THE WHALLEY WILL FRAUDS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1196, 30 January 1885, Page 3

THE WHALLEY WILL FRAUDS.

One of the most extraordinary cases of will-forgery which have ever been investigated in a court of justice leiminated on Tuesday afternoon last, after occupying Mr Justice Stephen and a special jury for seven continuous days.' About a year ago, when the forgery of Mr Whalley’s will was fiist suspected, and the civil case to upset the spurious document tried, I sent you a resume of the story as at that time accepted. Since then, however, many additional particulars have come to light, so that it will now be n .pessary to re-tell the tale in the shape it was laid before the jury. The three men wtio were on trial for the crime of forging or uttering the will of the late Mr James Wnalley, of Leominster, were respectively named Thomas, Nash, and Gunnell, the last of whom has been acquited. As regards Thomas, his career has been a somewhat chequered one. Before the year 18s0 we find him acting in the capaci y of a railway porter; but after that date he was promoted to the municipal office of sub inspector of nuisances at Leominster. He owed this appoin meat, it is s ate I, 1 1 the influence of M r Gunnell. The prisoner Thomas, ex-railway porter and nuisance inspector, was the pe son at whose humble homo old Mr Whatley chose to p ss the end of his days, living a decidedly f ngal, not to say miserly existence. Mr Whal'ey bad two natural children living, culled Emma and Henry Whalley Priestman, whom he seems to have e Inna ted and lived with until about the year 1877, when he quarrelled with his daughter, anil left, her and her brother at H-refoid, while he him self went off to live at Leominster, at Thomas’s cottage. In May, 1881, the eccentric old gentleman died, leaving a fortune of 1.50 000 or L 6",000 It has now been proved to the sa isfaction of the jury that Mr Whalley's will, in which he left almost the whole of h:a property to his ron, was done away with, and that Thomas and Nash between them concocted a forged will, in wh ch the bulk of the fobtnne was bequeathed to Thomas himself, wiiile the son was out off with the comparatively small sum of L5,0l)0. Sir Farrar Hersehell, the Solicitor General, who nrosicnted in the case, argued that forgery of a will was worse than any other kind of forgery, because the person whose signature was simulated was mcipable of onm'iig back to bfe in order to explain what his intentions really were. Nobody will be inclined to differ from this opinion ; but the forging of Mr Whalley’s final instate tions was even more heinous than such a crime must neces-ari y be. The trickery practised made Mr Whalley himself participate in the forgery without knowing it. Thomas, the leading rogue in ihe busbies--, must have prepared his plans carefully, and adopted wliat must be dese ibed as a very ingenions stratagem indeed in order to pass the money into his own pocket, and out ot that of young Henry Whalley Prio-tinan. Some time in March, 1881, Mr Whalley being ill, Thomas wrote a letter at his die ta-ion addressed to his son. The eccentric old miser was unable to do more than sign bis name at the foot, and this he did m ink, while the body of the letter, written by Thomas, was in pencil. The letter containe 1 a complaint to his son that the latter did not cmne over and see his father ; but young Whalley Priestman never received such a communication, and told his father so when the old man wrote again to the same effect. It was supposed that the letter had been “ lostin transmission” ; but it. seems now pe'feutly evident that it was never despatched at all. The artful trick devised by the ingenons brain of Thomas was as f llowa : —lf he c-uld only get a blank sheet of paper with Mr Whalley’s signature at the bo tom, he would have the main ingredients of a concocted will. It wan for i his reason that he must have written the dictated letter in pencil. When Mi Whalley’s signature was appendel, all th>l remained to do was to erase the pencilled letter, and ins rt such provisions as commended thems Ives to thi mind of the forv r. Bur. yet another foimaiity. happily, deman e l by the law had to be attended to. Wi nesses to the signature of Mr Whalley’a name had to be procured. The

two signatories to (he will wh ch the jury havo declared to bo forged woru Nash—toe mau no .v sentenced with Thomas to fifteen years’ penal servitude—and Reece, who bus escaped punishment by turning Queen’s evidence against the other two. It is quite obvious that both these persons must have signed the document, well knowing at the time that they were doing something which was illegal ; and the subsequent history of the case shows that Thomas bribed them to act as his accomplices by lavish promisee of the share which they would obtain out of Mr Whalley’s fortune. The proceedings after the death of the testator are of rather a complicated nature, and it is not in the least degree necessary to enter into the details of how the crime was first suspected and finally brought home to the prisoners. What is remarkable is that so long a time should have elapsed before the will, written on tne sheet of blue paper, was discovered to be a forgery. It was not until a year or two afterwards that anybody subj joted that will to any searching examination; but when the document, lying in the Registry of Wills a f Hereford, was critically investigated, there were found obvious traces of the erased pencilled letter written by old Mr Whalley to his son, which letter, until that time, was supposed to be lost iu the post office. Nothing probably could have exceeded the astonishment of the son when Thomas coolly read out to him the contents of the forged will. A month before, Mr Wholly bad called him to the bedsi le and. told him how he intended to leave him all his property, with the exception of trifling amounts to the executors and a sum of L4OO to be devoted to rebuilding Leominster pan.-h church. The true will was on blue paper ; therefore the surprise was all the greater when Thomas's will appeared written on white piper. The only way in which the phenomenon could lie explained was by supposing that Mr Whalley had Seen reason to alter his intentions. That he had really, however, done nothing of the kind was shown in a very curious way at the trial, The forge l will was dated at the end of March. By this will the testator was made o bequeath nearly everything to Thomas, and hardly anything to \Vha ley P.-ietlraan. Yet jn-t tnirteelf days before that date he had written a lett r o suns Yorkrhire bankers asking them to look out for a Stock Exchange partneiship for his son, adding that he would be willing to give LI0,01)0 to help him into a good position. This certainly does not seem consistent on the part of a ma - who intended to leave his son only LSOOO. A fortnight a f ter the date of the forged document he wrote to his stockbrokers, suggesting to them that certain securities, to the value of L'o,ooo, should be registered in the name of the same son. Nevertheless, this was the youth whom he was supposed and alleged to have virtually disinherited a fortnight before. It is cer tainly a matter for some astonishment that, with these proofs to show the unreality of the forged will, and with young Whalley Piiestman’s own evidence as t > what was iu his father’s will which he ha I seen, the prisoner Thomas was allowed so long to enjoy the status of Ihe man legally in possession. An action which was hr. ught by the next-of-kin to sat aside the will was compromised on the terms that Thomas, instead of obtaining the whole for uue should have ob tained only L 17.000. It was then that Thomas appears to have considered his position so safe that he could act with imprudence. He threw Nash and Reece over, and refused to keep his promise to them. Moreover, he seems to have been insane enough to wave a piece of blue paper in the air as the son was passing ins window, which paper is imagined to be the true and lost will. However this may be, it is satisfactory that the question between the white a.id the blue wills is now set at rest.