THE DRUCE CASE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3765, 4 May 1907, Page 3

THE DRUCE CASE.

Missing Diary Found. London, April 29. The New Zealand witness in the Druce case recovered the missing diary at the bottom of the luggage, where it had been overlooked. The trial is expected to take place in the autumn. HISTORY OF THE CASE. In connection with the above message, it may he mentioned that the lady witness referred to went Home from New Zealand to give evidence on behalt of Mr George Hollamby Druce, who is a claimant for the Portland estate. On reaching England and opening up her luggage she missed some documents, which she concluded had been stolen on the voyage. The lady, who states that she was for some years private secretary to the fifth Duke of Portland, alleged that amongst the documents supposed to have been stolen were some of Charles Dickens’ letters. Apparently quite a romantic story will be unfolded during the trial, which, now that the missing documents have been found, will no doubt commence very shortly. The essential facts upon which Mr George Hollamby Druce bases his claims to the Portland estates are of interest. Most of our readers will remember that the first claimant to the estates in question was Mrs Anna Druce. For several years Mrs Druce, who believed herself to be the widow of the eldest legitimate son of Thomas Charles Druce, of the Baker Street Bazaar, made unavailing efforts to compel the Consistory Court to grant her an order to open the grave of her husband’s father in Highgate Cemetery. She alleged that in this grave was buried, not the body oi Thomas Druce, but a quantity of lead. Druce, she said, was really the fifth Duke of Portland, who did not die until 1879. Doctors and a housekeeper swore, however to the facts of the death of Thomas Druce, and the Court refused to grant Mrs Druce the order. Just as the interest in the Druce case was beginning to fizzle out, a new claimant appeared, in the person of Mr George Hollamby Druce, an Australian carpenter. He claimed to have a better right than Mrs Anna Druce to take an interest in the Portland claim, inasmuch as he was the son of the eldest son of Thomas Charles Druce by a first marriage with Elizabeth Crickmer at Bury St. Edmunds on October 19th, 1816. According to the Hollamby Druce claim, this marriage was a runaway match between T. C. Druce, described as a linen-draper, and a schoolgirl heiress with a fortune ot ,£15,000. The “draper” is said to have appeared from nowhere, a handsome young man, without friends or relatives. For three years he lived with his wife, spending his money freely. In 1820, his wife’s fortune disappeared, he deserted her and her children. For fifteen years the Druce family at Bury St. Edmunds heard no more of their father. In 1835 he seems to have suddenly repented of his desertion, and discovering the ship on which the father of the present claimant was serving his apprenticeship was lying in the Thames, he went down to Gravesend and sent for his sixteen-year-old son. for the first time the Druce family learned that the missing father was the proprietor of a bazaar in Baker Street. The boy was taken there, educated at a naval academy, and again sent to sea. His sister, the aunt of the claimant, was also sent for, and lived for many years with her father, who now appears as the owner of a residence at Brighton, a hunting-box in Leicestershire, and a country seat at Hendon. The question that the courts are now to decide is ; was this man Druce, the owner of the bazaar, grandfather of George Hollamby Druce, really the fifth Duke of Portland ? It has been stated that Charles Dickens utilised the story of the elopement of Druce (or the fifth Duke of Portland) with Miss Crickmer. Miss Crickmer, according to the more recent discoveries, was still a child in mind up to the time of her marriage. School books of hers, dated 18x6, show that she was in the habit of ornamenting her possessions with those weird drawings and nonsensical verses in which young schoolgirls delight. It is contended that the incident of her elopement was included in “The Pickwick Papers” as an episode in the life of the adventurer, Alfred Jingle. Those who have read Dickens’s immortal work will recall that Mr, Pickwick, with the assistance of Sam Weller, strove to prevent the young lady at the boarding school near Bury from falling into the clutches of Alfred Jingle, who was masquerading under the title of, Fitz-Marshall, Dickens tells the same story, even including. the fact that the girl’s lover was wooing her under the guise of an alias. The date assigned to this adventure of Mr Pickwick’s is the late twenties of the nineteenth century. Miss Crickmer was, at school near Bury St. Edmunds up to the year of her marriage in 1816, an interval of ten years, sufficient for the story to get abroad. Dickens was known to draw very largely on incidents of real life for his fiction, and it is not improbable that the romantic story of Druce’s first marriage was current gossip in Bury during the early part of last century. It is quite evident that the evidence which will be supplied by the New Zealand lady witness and the documents in her possession must play an important part in the case, and further developments will be awaited with interest.