A DETECTIVE'S TRIP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 491, 7 October 1909, Page 4

A DETECTIVE'S TRIP.

SIR J. G. WARD EXPLAINS.

Sir Joseph Ward was asked recently by a Star reporter if he would state why Detective Cassells had been sent to London. The Prime Minister said that he was only too glad to slate what he knew of the facts. First of all, the man concerned whose letter to himself had been published was quite unknown to him on his visit to England in 1907. The man was introduced to him by Mr Wm. Bulcher, of Dunedin. The introduction took place just as he (Sir Joseph) was leaving his hotel one morning to attend a meeting of the Premiers’ Conference. The man informed him that he was leaving for New Zealand within a tew days, and asked whether he could give him a letter of introduction to the Government. This Sir Joseph at once agreed to do, and this was all that transpired. Late in the day, an ordinary letter of introduction to the Act-ing-Prime Minister was left for him at the hotel. Sir Joseph neither saw him again personally nor beard of him until his return to New Zealand, when the man endeavoured to get an interview with him. However, owing to the pressure connected with the opening of the session, it was deferred for a few days. When Sir Joseph subsequently saw him he arrogantly asked for an appointment to the public service, and declared such was promised to him by the Prime Minister before he left. England. He was iu'.ormed that what he stated was quite untrue, and that no promise of any kind had been made. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister said, the man in England neither asked his opinion as to the advisability of coming to New Zealand nor for employment, nor was the Prime Minister in any way responsible for the man’s corning to this country. Sir Joseph said that at a subsequent interview the man again asked him lor a position in the public service, but he advised him at once that his age rendered such an appointment impossible. The man said he was hard up, and bit Joseph said he would enquire whether there was any temporary casual clerical work offering, and if there was that he would advise him in due course. Some days later, a temporary clerk was required in one of the departments for some special work, the pay being at the rate of ten shillings per day. When the man was offered it he forwarded the Prime Minister the first of a series of intensely grotesque and impertinent letters, declining at the same time to accept ten shillings a day, and intimating that his services were of such a character that they were worth ,£7OO a year at least to start with. The Prime Minister informed the man, through his private secretary, that there was not the slightest chance of his employment in the public service of the country. The result of this was that periodically Sir Joseph received letters from him, conveying various threats, ami which, on the face of them, displayed a strangeness of intellect. These communications he did not give any attention to and the only thing he now blamed himself for was his generosity towards the man in not placing the matter at once in the hands of the police, with a view to his prosecution. Sir Joseph said he knew nothing whatever of the man, or that he had a wife and family in the Old Country, excepting the statements made in one of the latter letters received Irom him.

The man returned to England, and before doing so, and also from there continued to send threatening letters both to Sir Joseph Ward and the High Commissioner, repeating bis intentions upon Sir Joseph’s life. He (Sir Joseph) then handed the correspondence to the police, who, in the ordinary course, advised Scotland Yard. As far as Detective Cassells was concerned, his visit to England was not asked for, nor arranged at the Prime Minister's request. What took place was, .as he had subsequently learned, that Scotland Yard, prior to his departure, cabled the New Zealand police that the man bad disappeared from' the town in which he had been located, and could not be found, and it was believed he had come to meet the steamer upon which the Prime Minister was travelling, with the idea of carrying out his threats. The Prime Minister had no knowledge that Detective Cassells was going until the day he left New Zealand, when he was informed that the Police depaitmeut had considered it essential, in view of the advices they had received from Scotland Yard, to send a detective.