NOT AN EARL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 212, 5 September 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

NOT AN EARL.

THE ORGAN GRINDEIfS CLAIM TO A PEERAGE.

The Poulett peerage case ended during July in the House ol Lords in the defeat of William Tumour Tboxna.' Poulejtt, the self-styled Viscount Hkatan.

Five minutes sufficed the* _Kiid Chancellor to demolish the fabric of thirty-two years. His speech to the Committee for Privileges was disdainful in its rejection for th. organ grinder "viscount's" claim :o be the son of the late (and sixth) Earl Toulett. Lords Dav.y, Macnaghteu, Robertson, and Liudley concurred without even troubling to give reasons. Lord Motley, the chairman, put the question, ana the "eo_ten.s" were unanimous.

.So the , Committee will report to the House "that the youthful son of the late carl's third marriage has established his right to the dignity. He becomes of age a year next September, and Will then take his seat at the seventh Earl Poulett. A HUSBAND'S RIGHT. The proceedings before the Lords opened with a legal squahble as to the admissibility of the late Lord Pou'ett's depositions. May a husband give evidence iv court when he denies the paternity of a putative child? The old leading case says "no"—such marital evidence is to be re: .acd on the grounds of uecency and public probity. The. House of Lords settled that he could.

According Mr Haldane, X..C., read the dead earl's story. It was auother voice from the grave, and It merely repeated the thrice-told tale of a subaltern's escapade with a woman who had been no better than she shonld be.

"The only time 1 saw Elizabeth Newman in Dublin," ran these depositions, "Was it a luncheon at the Phoenix Park races. A few mouths later 1 met her quite accidentally in the street at Portsmouth. I Wanted to take her to Loudou; but she said that she Would never have relations with a man again unless she was married to him. So we were married. .

When I married her I had no suspicion that she was enciente. After two months I taxed her with it. She confessed that Captain Granville was the father. Before our marriage 1 did learn that she had been living with Captain Granville, and had had one or two children by him." "VISCOUNT'S" LAST APPEABANCE. The depositions of the dead earl were then pushed aside, and the central living figure of the whole romance took ,his place at the bar to give evidence. Mr William Tumour Thomas Poule.fr- ; to give him the only name to which he has any right—does not lend himself easily to description. He Is short and thick set, and appears to be sho-t-sighted. The distinguishing feature, perhaps, is the curious arrangement of the hair in a series of plastered down ringlets. The gist of bis evidence is quickly told:

"My mother always told me that Earl Poulett was my father. In my boyhood I was introduced by the Wife of the fifth earl to the Dowager Duchess of Cleveland and to other friends of hers. I was always introduced as Viscount Hinton.

"When my mother died I received, a letter from Lord Foulett. He addressed it to Lord Hinton. In it he asked me to call aud see him, but he directed me to give my. name as Tumour at his door, as he had particular reasons for wishing the servants not to know who I was. I refused to go. When I did visit him later at Victoria Mansions, he asked me to go to India to manage some indigo plantations.

"I always heard that he and my mother Were great friends a long time before the banns were put up."

In reply to Mr Warmington the witness said that he could not remember whether the earl had ever told him that his father was Captain Granville. If he had not called himself Lord Hinton before his mother's death, no doubt it was because he had not wished to annoy the earl.

He was next shown the birth certificate of his own eldest son. Iv it he was described as "William Tumour Thomas Poulett."

"Oh, that entry is quite wrong," he exclaimed. Then the pathetic figure moved silently away from the bar, and was absent while the Lord Chancellor was demolishing his pretensions once and for all.

Lord Halsbury's speech, which was In effect the judgment, amounted to thi3: that the late earl had conclusively proved that he was not the father of his first wife's child, and that the latter had no shadow of a claim to the dormant earldom.