OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1606, 14 April 1879, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[from our own correspondent.] London, February 27. We have commenced the season of Lent under circumstances that might fairly induce a penitential frame of mind in even the most prosperous and worldly-minded. We are still suffering all the horrors of an almost Arctic winter. I understand that on your side of the globe you are enduring a summer that is exceptionally hot, and wo are warned that we may expect the same kind of weather here, but we still remain in an attitude of mere ex. pectancy, for the prophets tell us that what we have gone through in the shape of cold is as nothing to what is in store for us. I spoke of an Arctic winter, and I did not exaggerate, for during the three months which will end to-morrow we have hardly ever seen any sunshine. They have at Greenwich Observatory, where, by the way, it is brightness itself compared to what we get in the region from St. Paul’s to Oharing Cross, an ingenious instrument which registers the amount of sunshine, yet it has had almost nothing to do since last October, and in many weeks has only been at work for a couple of hours, which means that in London itself we have never had a ray of sunlight. Then the whole country was horror-striken a few mornings since by the nows of the frightful disaster which had befallen our troops in the Zulu country, and which has thrown the Ameer and the Afghan campaign completely in the shade. It is nothing short of marvellous how strong a love for the army exists in this country. Not only was the Government universally applauded for its instant determination to send out a strong force for the defence of our South African colonies, as well as to avenge the deaths of those who had been swept away, but every departing batch of soldiers has been cheered to the echo by the crowds who have gathered where over a glimpse of the reinforcements could bo obtained. Twice indeed the crowd have been on a wrong scent, but they have filled the streets on the chance of seeing the soldiers and giving them a hearty farewell cheer, for King Cetywayo —Ketchways he is called by Africans —is an enemy who is regarded with the utmost scorn and derision. Since last I wrote another distinguished officer who served in New Zealand during the Maori war, has passed away at an advanced age. I allude to Sir Thomas Simeon Pratt, who had served in the British army for considerably more than half a century, having begun his military career in Holland in 1814. Ho may truly be said to have been an officer of world-wide experience. Ho obtained his K.C.B. for his services in your colony. Several matters of commercial interest have also transpired during this month. At the fourteenth annual meeting of the shareholders of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company it was reported that during 1878 there was a satisfactory increase of debenture capital for which safe and desirable outlets continued to bo found in tho Australasian colonies and New Zealand. It was stated that during the past year tho consignments of wool, grain, and other colonial products to the compmny had been much developed, and it now occupies for the first time the highest position amongst importers of colonial wools. It was agreed to commence a guarantee and provident fund, and to declare a fifteen per cent dividend, although several shareholders thought that a larger profit might bo given them. The shareholders of tho Australian Agricultural Company have

also hold a meeting, and were congratulated on the promising aspect of their affairs. The extraordinary interest which people in London always feel in anything relating to the management of lunatic asylums and the treatment of the insane has been again displayed concerning the trial of an action which an Irish gentleman, who was insane and is still not altogether in his right mind, brought against the keepers of the institution in which he was for sometime detained. I should tell you that, in a recent session of Parliament, a special committee was appointed to inquire into the subject of the lunacy laws. They examined a number of witnesses, many of whom had been inmates of asylums at some period of their lives. Of course they made what were called “remarkable revelations,” but it was shown that, if those statements were not wholly baseless, they were greatly exaggerated, and the real facts completely hidden on the complaining side. So it was proved again, in this most recent case, in which the plaintiff, Mr Edward Wesley Nunn, who is a magistrate for the county of Wexford and possessed of a considerable amount of . landed property, sued the defendant, Dr. Fleming, the physician in charge of a private asylum at Fulham, for damages for an assault. His case was that, as long ago as March, 1874, he escaped from the asylum, but was found by the gardener and taken'back, when, as a punishment for leaving the house, he was seized by four or five men, stripped, and plunged into a bath, his head being repeatedly forced under tb e wg,ter. He admitted that about this time he was so insane that he swallowed his gold shirt studs, in the belief that they would cure a pain in his stomach. His story about the bath scone was a marvellous one, but, as truth is stranger than fiction, it was excelled by an incident that was related by his wife, who was called as one of the witnesses for the defence. She stated that before he was put in the Fulham Asylum he was so mad that she was advised to have a keeper for him, but, not liking to do so, she used to git all night on the mat at his bedroom door and watch him, but one night, when it was very cold, she fell asleep. Her husband took advantage of this opportunity to jump from the bedroom window into the street. All the clothing he had on was a white day shirt and a pair of socks, yet in this scanty attire he walked about the streets until he met two policemen. He told them whore he lived, and they took him home, awakening his wife by their loud ringing of the street door bell. Long before the list of witnesses for the defence had been exhausted, the Lord Chief Baron who tried the case suggested that it ought to|be stopped, but in order more to please his erratic client than to satisfy his calm self, Mr Serjeant Parry fought it out to the end with the result that wag foreseen two days before it arrived —viz., a verdict for the defendant. Of course such a decision has aroused the sympathies of that large class who, though not out of their minds, are still “cracked” on some particular matter. In my last letter I gave some account of the life of Charles Peace, a most daring man, who after an unparalled career of seduction, burglary, and murder, has at length come to an end on the gallows. It is so extraordinary a case that I think it worth a few more remarks, The murder for which he was convicted was that of Mr Dyson, a civil engineer who lived at Sheffield. Peace went one night to the house where the Dyson’s lived, waited at the back until he saw Mrs Dyson, who screamed at the sight of his pistol. This scream brought out Mr Dyson, who was shot dead on the spot. The murderer escaped, and the widow after the funeral went to the United States, whence she returned to give evidence. This done she has returned to America, and by this time is in her new home again. At the trial Peace, who, throughout his imprisonment, had behaved in a very extraordinary manner, was defended by an able counsel, but his efforts to exculpate his client were in vain. He sought to damage Mrs Dyson’s reputation by showing that she had been in the habit of gadding about to fairs and public houses with Peace, and that she had arranged to meet him on the night when her husband was shot, but the jury seem to have disregarded this idea, and believed in the woman, who uncompelled had crossed the Atlantic in the middle of winter to avenge her husband’s death. Counsel also tried to make out that the firing of the fatal shot was an accidental matter during a struggle, but there was nothing to support such an hypothesis. He was condemned to death, and on Tuesday morning he was hung in Armley G-aol, near Leeds. There is nothing heroic nowadays about an execution. The old Newgate calendar style of being hung in public was done away with years ago, but still reporters who could “ do the descriptive” were allowed to be present at executions witkin the gaols. Quite recently all the prisons in England have become the property of the Government, and it is now very difficult, if not almost impossible, for a stranger to gain admission. Indeed quite recently a Government inspector had quite a quarrel with a turnkey who did not know him. On this occasion, however, the rule was so far relaxed as to permit the presence of four reporters, two of whom Peace knew well by sight, as they have regularly attended all the courts in which he has been brought up. When he came into the prison yard he walked up to the scaffold, and when the rope had been fixed round his neck, he made a speech to these reporters, which they have printed in the newspapers. Within half an hour before he wrote a note to his wife, to whom ho has sent a copy of a funeral card, which he wished to be distributed.

Having thus disposed of one criminal I will now proceed to write the last few lines which I shall have to send you concerning a group of malefactors whoso misdeeds have occupied paragraphs in several former letters, viz.: the directors and manager of the City of Q-lasgow Bank. Shortly after the despatch of my last letter they were all round guilty of the only charges which the prosecution allowed to remain against them, viz , the preparation and issue of false balance-sheets. It having been proved that Mr Lewis Potter, the director, and Mr Robert Stronach, the manager, had taken the most active and direct part in this fraud, they were sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The other three directors, Messrs. Taylor, Stewart, and Wright, who had only been parties to the fraud which had been concocted by the others, escaped with a lighter punishment, viz., eight months. In all these oases the Judges took into consideration the fact that the prisoners had been in custody for four months. You may be surprised, as most people at home were, at what at first sight appears to bo a very inadequate punishment for a great offence, but this is a piece of good luck to the prisoners. To the public generally it seemed that the prisoners were guilty of robbing the shareholders and creditors of the bank of between five and six millions of money, but owing to the strict proof which the law required the Lord Advocate was obliged to abandon, one after another, all the more serious charges, so that the highest punishment which could be awarded for the misdemeanour that remained was two years’ imprisonment. Yet the actual sentence which was pronounced produced something very like a howl of indignation from those who were quite willing to consign the ex-directors to a long period of penal servitude. However their punishment is severe enough, however long it may be. Picture five men who as many months ago wore in the full enjoyment of apparent prosperity being now in a prison picking oakum, or making mats, and then say whether justice has not overtaken them. Such is the fate of the bank directors.

They have been having a merry time of it in the Divorce Court this month. Amongst the petitioners was Mrs Spiers, the wife of the head of tho firm of Spiers and Pond, who came from Australia some years ago, and set themselves up in business in London as refreshment contractors on a large scale, a business in which they have succeeded with great profit to themselves and still greater satisfaction to tho public. Although they now employ some hundreds of young women in their bars, and during tho time they have been in business many thousands must have gone into and left their employ, there has never been the slightest whisper of scandal concerning anyone of their numerous establishments. So it was with considerable surprise that the public learned last week that Mr and Mrs Spiers were “ not happy in their

domestic relations” —which I believe is the polite way of saying that a man and his wife have quarrelled about the misconduct of the former. Mr Felix William Spiers married his wife. Antoinette Emilie, at the Cathedral of St. Francis in Melbourne, in August , 1855. They remained ill Australia for several years, and both there and in this country, dowti to 1871, they lived on very affectionate terras, and have one son who is now of man’s estate. Suddenly Mr Spiers confessed to his wife that he had formed an immoral acquaintance with a French woman named Delapre, but his wife forgave him on the condition, which he fulfilled, that he would send the woman back to France. However, within two years she wrote to him, and then returned to England, and of late has been living with him at an hotel in Norwood, Except for this matter Mrs Spiers had nothing to complain of, and therefore an absolute divorce was not obtainable, nor did either of the parties seem to desire it, for a divorce decree could only put the French woman in a superior position, so, as Mr Spiers did not deny what was only too patent, the Court made an order for a judicial separation. The Earl of Desart has again had to parade his woes before an unadmiring public. In a recent letter I mentioned that he had petitioned for and obtained a divorce from his wife, who had gone from bad to worse, and beginning with extravagance had ended in guilt. This young Irish nobleman was the heir to a large estate, but his predecessors had so mortgaged and encumbered the property that it left him only about fifteen hundred a year to meet all his expenses. Soon after her marriage Lady Desart launched out into the usual round of expenditure, or perhaps I should rather say credit, with milliners and modistes, and her first lump of debt was paid by her husband and her father. It was then arranged that she should be allowed two hundred and fifty pounds per annum for her personal expenses. But what could a lady of title do with less than five pounds a week for dress ? Of course even a povertystricken countess could obtain credit from West-end tradesmen, who when the divorce came sued the husband for what she owed them. They lost their cases, and I am glad of it, for the unprincipled way in which such tradesmen gave credit has had much to do with the depression from which London trade is now suffering. But I am sorry for Lord Desart, whose £ISOO a year would keep a single man comfortably in Ireland, but will not support a married couple in the midst of the elite of London fashion.

But it is not only on account of what is past that the Divorce Court is interesting. If all be true that I hear, or even if only part of it is true, Sir James Hannan, the President of that Court is about to have a lively time of it. Lady Gooch has asked him to try her petition for a divorce from Sir Francis, her husband, who, you will recollect, recently exposed her little deception about a baby. But there is a much better known woman coming before him as petitioner. I allude to Mrs Weldon, the wife of a gentleman bolding a high position in the Civil Service, Some years ago, when M. Gounod, the composer of the worldfamous opera of “Faust,” came to England to give concerts, she was his chief vocalist, and it was at her house in Tavistock square that his chorus singers were trained. Since then a portion of her house has been turned into an orphan asylum, while her husband has had to seek refuge elsewhere. She has now filed a petition against him. Ho has refrained from taking any proceedings against her, except that some |time ago he procured her admission into a lunatic asylum, from which she escaped, and since then, when she has been lecturing on the injustice of the law of lunacy, she has been writing against him and his friend, and behaving, to say the least, in a very provoking manner. One of her ideas is that her husband wants to get rid of her in order that he may marry a daughter of Sir Henry de Bathe, a young lady who is now only twenty years of age, while Mr Weldon must be nearly the age of her father. A weekly newspaper having espoused her cause, was incautious enough to publish a violent letter from her on this subject. This, of course, Sir Henry could not submit to, for it contained serious imputations against himself as well as his daughter. He has therefore commenced proceedings against the newspaper, so that between the prosecution and the divorce suit, wo are likely to have the whole history 'of Mrs Weldon unravelled, and a very interesting one I think it will prove to be. “ Can you wonder when trade is so bad ?” is the refrain of a popular song which has been addressed to the audiences at all the theatres which produced a pantomime last Christmas. Mr Ohatterton, the lessee of Drury Lane Theatre, a house which many in New Zealand must know well and remember as the most prosperous “ house” in London, has had to appeal to his employes in the same words. Trade has been bad, and for a long time past, and this fact, coupled with the equally patent one that the competition by the neighboring theatre in Covent Garden has this winter been severer than ever, has told on the Drury Lane exchequer. The consequence was that early in this present month, and long before the ordinary run of the pantomime should have ceased, Mr Ohatterton was obliged to call a meeting on the stage, and ask those in his employ to accept much smaller salaries than he had agreed to pay them for the season. Half a loaf is proverbially admitted to be better than no bread, and most of those employed in the theatre had, at that particular time, when there was no chance of employment at other houses, no other option than to accept the manager’s terms. Bub Mr Clown stood out, and so did Mr and the Misses Yokes, a very clever family, who have helped to keep up the fortunes of old Drury for several years. They jdeclined to take less than their full pay, and as the performance could not go on without them, Mr Chatterton at once posted a bill outside to say that the theatre was closed till further notice. Next week he presented a petition to the Court of Bankruptcy, and he has failed for a stiff sum. He is the author of a saying that to a London manager Shakespeare meant bankruptcy ; but he has shown that sensation plays can bring about the same result, while, at the bottom of the same shed, at the Lyceum Theatre, Mr Henry Irving is not only filling the house with enthusiastic admirers of his marvellous impersonation of Hamlet, but actually turning away large numbers almost every night.