ANOTHER SOCIETY SCANDAL.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 March 1925, Page 3

ANOTHER SOCIETY SCANDAL.

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i'l{ A C DIM ,KXT COX.S J’ 111 AC V ALLEGED. THE WAYS OF A LADY. 4VBIBALIAN AND N.Z. CAULS ASHOCIA'XIO.N. (Received this (Jay at 9.125 a.in.) LONDON, .March IS. One of tlie most amazing cases for many years was ofeneil hefore .Mr .Justice Shearman anil a special jury. Alter tlie failure of attempts made at the Judge’s suggestion to reach a settlement, counsel explained that .Mrs -Muriel Waterhouse, as executrix of her hue husband, whom she married in 1010, was proceeding against Sir David Wilson Barker, an cx-Captuin in the .Naval Deserve, his wife and a man named Sheldon, all of JJaiikhurst, Kent, alleging that Bay Wilson Barker obtained from .Mr Wateihou.se huge sums hy means of iraudulent representation and that Sheldon ami Daily Wilson Barker participated in the fr.uniulent conspiracy lor the same purjio.se.

Plaintiff seeks to account lor these payments, or, alternatively, damages. Tlaintilf’s counsel said the tonspirmy began in 1989. Frank Wate;bouse the son of wealthy patents, bad inherited £lui),(H)o when staying at Harrogate with his mother in 181)0. When he was forty lie made the acquaintance of Daily Wilson Barker, who gained Airs Waterhouse’s deep all’ection. She won ascendancy over the doting mother and her sou and been me a. frequent visitor to the Waterhouse home. .For years the two women carried on a correspondence of a deep religious charactei ; nevertheless, counsel alleged that Daily Wilson Barker, for years, carried on an intrigue with Frank Waterhouse, and then subsequently! with Sheldon’s assistance, stripped Frank of every lai thing, with the result tnat he died in 1922 insolvent. The conspiracy was only discovered after Waterhouse’s death. Daily Wilson Earlier pretended that her solicitor had discovered their liaison, and lie was threatening to tell her husband, and that only secret payments could prevent an exposure. She imposed on Frank an oath of secrecy and then, ostensibly to buy the threatoner’s silence, obtained large .sums I rum AVaterhou.se, sometimes £2OOO at a

time, all being paid in bank-notes. Frank Waterhouse was a man „i weak character and lie later became an invalid. Sir Herbert Waterhouse would give evidence that Sheldon came to him !is the head of the Waterhouse family, and said the origin of the trouble was that -Mrs Waterhouse had made both her sons promise to give Daily Wilson Barker £IOOO each after her death. They hail not carried out this promise iiin] Daily Wilson Barker and Sheldon hail considered other means of obtaining the £BOOO. .Sheldon helped to compose some of her letters and they obtained much more than the £BOOO. When the claim was first made against Daily Wilson Barker she obtained a certificate that she was in a stale of onfecblement, bordering nil lunacy. She deceived another doctor into certifying her ns mentally not normal, and also deceived her own solicitor, yet when watched hy enquiry agents it was found that 'she was following the normal occupation of a lady.