SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2750, 13 December 1894, Page 3

SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.

A New York dispatch of October 22nd says a suit will be begun in London within the next month which involves the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and which turns upon one of the most remarkable tragedies Great Britain has ever known. The suit is brought by Major Dudley Hambrough, father and administrator of Cecil Hambrough, deceased, to recover from the Mutual Life Insurance Company insurance to the amount of £20,000 upon the life of Cecil Hambrough. Cecil was a young man about twenty years of age. When became of age considerable property was to fall to him, but in the meantime neither he nor his father had ready money, his father being a former army officer, who had sold . his commission and gone through his 1 estate. Young Hambrough fell in with John Monson and his wife, who were impecunious yet had taken the estate of Ardlamont, near what are known as the “Kyles of Bute,” in Scotland. There were shooting and fishing, together with the old-fashioned home that went with the Ardlamont estate; the whole at a very moderate rental. The Monsous acted as tutors to young Hambrough, and, in order to secure them for the money he was unable to give them, he consented to let them insure his life in their favour to the amount of £20,000 until the time when he should come of age. The Mutual Life consented to let Hambrough insure himself and then transfer the policy to the Monsons. _ Hambrough did so insure his life, and transferred the policies as agreed. Then a very singular thing happened. Young Mr Hambrough met with a very violent death, and the only persons known to be near him at the time were Alfred John Monson and a man who bore a number of names, one of them being Scott, who disappeared immediately after the tragedy. A subsequent investigation reveaied that the Monsons were at the time of the insurance on Hambrough’s life so closely pressed for money that they were well nigh desperate. This and other and contradictory statements that were made caused the arrest of Monson for the murder of Cecil Hambrough. The trial was long and intensely exciting, resulting in the Scotch verdict of ‘Not proven.” It happens that in the proposal form of the Mutual Life Insurance Company there is s declaration that runs as follows : —“ The following are all the Companies or Associations to which I have ever applied for any life assurance which has been refused on the plan asked for or postponed.” It is on what Cecil Hambrough declared with regard to this matter that the contention of the Insurance Company, in resisting Major Hambrongh’s demand for payment rests. [A recent states that a verdict was given for the coinpany.]