The History of a Stupendous Fraud. [FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT].

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 34, 26 January 1884, Page 5

The History of a Stupendous Fraud. [FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT].

The Whalley will case which has occupied a Judge and Jury for three weeks past is at lust ovei\aiKh'oinancistsha\ c before them material for as sensational a novel as ever was concocted by Miss Braddon or Boisgobey. The question which the Jury had to decide was this : A stupendous fraud, involving the ownership of a vast fortune, had been committed either by plaintiff or defendant. Which was the sinner? On the one hand, the plaintiff brought his action to establish the fact that a forged will had been deliberately manufactured and supported by perjured testimony in order to secure .-it least a share in the large property, of which old ♦Mr Whalley died possessed on the spring of ISSI. On the other, the defendants turned desperately to bay and asserted through their counsel that the plaintiff and his advisers were the real conspirators who had not only suborned witnesses to prove their case, but had themselves forged the documents which most strongly supported it. Let us then consider the story — or rather a brief recapitulation of the leading features. In May, 1881, Mr Whalley, an enormously wealthy iron-master, died at Leominster, in the house of a railway porter named Thomas, with whom he had been lodging for some time previous to his death. Mr Whalley was not on terms of intimacy with any of his relatives with the exception of two natural children, Henry Whalley Priestman, the plaintiff in the present action, and his sister, Emma Priestman. Immediately after the old man's death a will was produced by Thomas, the railway porter, and a wine merchant named Gunnell, by which the latter was nominated executor,; and the bulk of the estate, amounting to between fifty and sixty thousand pounds, was left to Thomas. Henry Priestman, the plaintiff, took a legacy of five thousaud pounds, but no one else had any beneficial interest. The will was promptly disputed in the Probate Court, but the proceedings terminated in a compromise, by which Thomas took seventeen thousand pounds. At this time it was not alleged that the will, which was dated the 21st of March, was forged, but another will was set up, under which Henry Priestman took the bulk of the property in the place of Thomas. The present action was brought to set aside this compromise, on the ground that it had been obtained by fraud ; and some of the evidence given to establish this fraud was of the most singular kind. In October, 1882, it was discovered that the original will of the 21st of March, which had been since the old man's death in official custody, bore upon it certain pencil marks. An examination by experts revealed the fact that some of this pencil writing was decipherable, and certain words were visible, which were unquestionably either in the handwriting of Thomas, or a very good imitation of it. The witnesses to the will were two men named Nash and Rees, the latter of whom made a confession in the witness-box which showed, if true, that a most remarkable fraud had been committed. It was alleged that a letter had been written in pencil by Thomas, at the dictation of Whalley, to Henry Priestman, to which the old man had bonafi.de affixed his signature ; that this letter had been retained by Thomas, instead of sending it ;

that tho pencil writing had then been rubbed out ; and that a spurious will had been written in by Nash (who had been a solicitor's clerk) above the old man's signature, the other attesting witness, Reo 3, being, of course, a party to the plot. The real will of Mr Whalley, it was alleged, gave his property to the plaintiff, his natural son ; and in support of this theory not only indirect expressions by the old man before and after the date of the forged will were relied on, but a letter written by him to Emma Priostman on the 19bh of April was produced, in which the deceased unennivo. cally declared he had so dealt with his property. That this lotter was not forthcoming until late in the litigation was accounted for by the tact that it contained a reference to a secret of a painful kind, known only to Miss Emma Priestman and the deceased, to which she was extremely relucant to give publicity. The answer made by the defendants to the case thus set up was bold, and, indeed, desperate. It was said that Kees had been bought over to invent or support the story, and that attempts had been made to suborn Nash in the same way ; that the letter of the 19th of April had been deliberately forged with the same object ; and that it had not been forthcoming at an earlier date simply because it was not then in existence. The pencil mavks on the will were dealt with inthesame manner. The plaintiff's witnesses had explained their presence by alleging that the erasnre of pencil writing by bread or india-rubber is generally imperfect, and consists in great part of merely roughening the surface filaments of the paper, so as to hide the marks. It was said that in time these displaced filaments have a tendency to re-straighten themselves, and recover jthe orio-inul surface, and that this had taken place during the seventeen months that the will was in official custody. The defendant could not deny that the pencil marks were there, because they wei*e visible to the naked eye ; nor could he dispute that they appeared to be in his handwriting ; but his counsel suggested that they had been artificially placed on tho will by transferring them from another piece of paper during an inspection either afc the Hereford Registry, or at Somerset House. Witnesses were called to prove that this was possible ; and there was a conflict of expert testimony as to whether the surface of the paper was more in accordance with this theory or with the case for the plaintiff. The maxim, " lit era scvipln manet, ' was perhaps never more strangely illustrated. Even this extraordinary dispute, however, would not have prolonged the ease over so many days had it not been for the necessity of minutely investigating the negotiations which hnd ended in detaching Kees from the party of the defendant, and which were iraid to have had the same effect at one time upon Nash. It was beyond question that some promise of money, or, as it was put by Nash himself, of " a handsome present ," had been made by Thomas to both these men, and it was suggested that the split in the camp had been caused by his failure to keep his word. Here again the defendants retaliated and accused the plaintiff and his solicitor of offering these men pecuniary bribes to invent and support the story of the plot. The whole case, in short, reeked with consp-'racy and fraud of the grossest kind; but the jury found no difficulty in deciding that the' accusations made by the plaintiff were true, and that Thomas and Nash were the guilty parties. Of Gunnell, the executor, it is not necessaiy to say more than that the evidence given in the cause div not demonstrate his complicity in the plot, and that no question effecting him personally was left to the jury. That the main issue in the ease was rightly decided there can be no doubt. It was almost admitted by the defendant's counsel that if the letter from Mr Whalley to his daughter on the 10th of April were genuine, there was an end of the case. It_is difficult to conceive any reason which should have induced Preistman and his sister to forge such a letter, giving needles publicity to an entirely irrelevant secret of a painful character when it would have been equally easy to have concocted a document without any reference of the sort. There were other letters of old Mr Whalley, admittedly genuine, and admittedly written after the date of the supposed will, quite inconsistent with its contents ; and that Thomas and Nash, to say nothing of Rees, were guilty of torgery and conspiracy was demonstrated as clearly as can be expected or required in a Civil Court. Such was the verdict of the Jury, with which the Judge expressed his entire concurrence ; and even in the face of [the strong probability that criminal proceedings will follow the result of the present action, it would be affectation to ignore the truth. Fven the civil litigation is not yet over, inasmuch as it will still be necessary to revoke the probate of the forged will, which was obtained as part of the conpromise in 18S2. That will follow as a matter of course ; and Thomas with his confederates, will find that they have, like so many consph'ators before them, steeped themselves to the lips in perjury in vain.