SOMETHING- IN HIGH LIFE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 47, 23 February 1877, Page 4

SOMETHING- IN HIGH LIFE.

This is the story told by a London correspondent : —

Every English lady with any pretensiona to "style" reads, cherishes, and believes in her " Dabrett's Peerage and Baronetage. " To such fair readers of an almoat sacred book, a report ia the papers must have given a feeling ekin to the sadness of one whose ears have received the echoes of a blasphemy. Sir Edward A. Cunynghatne, the nephew of Major-General Sir W. Cunynghame, K C.8,, and himself the seventh of the name, has been brought before a police magistrate on the charge of perhaps the very lowest kind of swindling that is anywhere practised by civilised man. A certain Mr. Doyle, a gentleman of large property in Ireland, charges that Sir Edward Cunynghume, in company with two other gentlemen of not very respectable history, conspired to obtain, by fraud, and did so obtain, a deed whereby he not only bound himself to pay £500 without any consideration, but took upon himself, jointly with men of no property, the debts and liabilities of an insolvent business. The case is not yet decided: Doyla urges that he was druok when he signed the deed ; and shows in evidence that Cuuyngharne and the oiher defendants for a long time practised upon him at Chirm's Hotel, where he was staying, (he most thorough-going system of sponging that was ever heard of. They used to come regularly, almost every day, to his bedroom and drink champagne cup ad lib at his expense before he got up. They ordered the cup. All drank of it ; and he paid for it. They used also to dine with him and fare sumptuously at his expense. They used to borrow his olothes, his money, everything in short ; and at length they wheedled out of him the said unfortunate deed. The plaintiff's case is not yet proved, but it looks somewhat " fishy" for the defendants.