A STRANGE CAREER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 204, 27 August 1872, Page 4

A STRANGE CAREER.

(From the Melbourne Leader.)

Among the men brought up at the City Police Court on the 25th July, charged with gambling in a Chinese deD, in Little Bourke-street, was one whose Australian career is well worth recapitulating, as showing the degradation into which men of high position fall when they once enter upon what is very truthfully though vulgarly termed "a rough life." Tichborne,- if he of Wagga Wagga is Tichborne, had some strange experiences while he resided, in- this part of the country, but his life has hardly been as eventful as that of Henry Travers, a&W Thomas Gerald Golding, alias Frank Hogg, alias Powell. Travers, who is aaid to be heir to an English baronetcy, seems to have spent , his Australian life chiefly within four miles of a prison cell. '■ He first appeared in this country in the year 1865, having arrived by a ship called the Ulcoates, from London. He described himself as Thomas Gerald Golding, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, .and for some time he led what is called a fast life in Melbourne. Towards the close of that year he appeared to have: run short of supplies, for on the Ist Feb., 1866>, he was brought up at the City Court on two charges of obtaining money by false pretences, for which he was sentenced tOsthree and six months' imprisonment at Pentfidge. He was liberated towards the; close of the year j but he was not .• at , .Jarge „ more than iwp or , three ;' months befdre be had recourse to his old of rarsicg the wind. On the 21st

MaTcb, 1867, he was apprehended on four chargesof obtaining property, by false representations, and received four sentences, extending over a period of sixteen months. He served this period at the stockade in Pentridge, but he was little benefifcted by prison discipline. He had tried all he could to raise nioney by fraud, but he had now got the length of his tether. A new idea, however, seized him, and he came out as a detective. He went about for a time personating one of these clever people, but the game did not answer ; he was arrested, and once more sent to Pentridge for two years. During this period he met with an accident, .which brought on paralysis, and when he was once more set at liberty he had to seek shelter at the Immigrants' Home and the Benevolent Asylum. He left the Home, and took one of the female nurses with him, aud the disgrace 1 which he had brought upon himself at the charitable institutions impelled the managers of those institutions to close their doors against him. Some time ago he sent a letter to his Excellency the Governor, asking his assistance, and in that letter he represented himself to be the son of General Travers, then in India, and as there happened to be an Indian officer in Melbourne at the time, it is understood that his Excellency commissioned him to make inquiries as to the truth of the statement when he returned to join his regiment. Should these reports prove correct, Henry Travers will one day be a baronet, aud we shall have another piece of romance to record.