GREAT BLUFFER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 4, 6 January 1938, Page 16

GREAT BLUFFER.

FOUR YEARS' GAOL. BLACKMAIL AND BIGAMY. | SEBT SATIOK AX CASE EKDS. I (Special.—Bt Air Mail.) LONDON, December IT. One ai the world's biggest bluffer* | began four years' penal servitude when three people concerned in the blackmail 3of ' i!r. X." a Portsmouth naval otßeer, I were sentenced at Winchester Assizes. This was the re-nit of the case:— | Thomas Ronald Hyman Max Davie*, i aged 34. of Nightingale Road, Southsea. j! sentenced to four years for blackmail j 2nd bigamy ("In my view" far 100 ; little," said Mr. Justice Tucker). | Gwendoline Davies (or Edwards', j aged 22, his bigamous wife, nine months' s imprisonment for conspiring to demand j, money by menaces. And I Charles Thomas Duke, aged 43, taxi* S cab driver, of Freegrove Road, Holloiway, IS months' hard labour. So ends the case of ""Mr. X," which ( for foar months has yielded sensation j after sensation; but to-day can be | revealed the greatest of all—the exploits | of Envies, who. for five vears. has been "Dr. Davias, M-R.C.S- i-BrP," "Dr. ii Davufcoa."' and "Dr. Colquhoun," jj son of a millionaire." and "an Egyptian I aristocrat.'' | Actually he was born an illegitimate child, in and nanied' Maxim Davidson. S His vanity was such that a couple of jj years ago he drove up to the home of | hss foster parents in a huge limousine j: with a liveried chauffeur, and told them I he could not etay loag as a yacht was | waiting to take him to the United jj States. | He Vanished. jj Tor several years he lived with foster- \ parents at West Croydon, attending the j local council school. On leaving an | industrial school. Davies entered the j merchant service sh". obtained a Board f of Trade seaman's ticket. | He served in various foreign ships I WBiii 1923. and then became aa engine t cleaner with an aircraft firm at Cruy- | don. ! In the same year he married at Hackney Register Ofijce Margaret j Dorothy Agnes Set lick, and they had j two children who are now in an I orphanage. | One night five years ago he came | home from work. Hi 1 ? wife went out i shopping, and when she returned he jj bad vanished. She did not .see him j again until he stood in the dock at j Portsmouth Police Court last, September. In Harley Street. Up to this time, Davies, according to the police, had lived a normal life; suddenly his mode of living changed completely. Max Davies, the humble engine cleaner and ex-seaman, ceased to exist. He became another personality. He branched out into the sphere of medicine, assuming the name of a dead j Harley Street specialist. J He took a palatial house in Harley S Street, lived in luxury, and entertained I sumptuously. His medical activities j accounted for much of his wealth. He treated several women who paid him large fees. One of his victims was. a well-known - variety artist whom he gave 1-t injections for diabetes. Xot satisfied with the treatment he was getting, this man was examined by another doctor who found that, he was not suffering from that complaint at aIL j Maternity Doctor. g The police are now in possession of ji names of other people he attended as a doctor, in seme cases giving injections i for various complaints. He is. also said i to have attended maternity eases. After a car accident he was- awarded £250 special damages in the High Court. lender the name of Dr. Davidson. It is believed by the police that just before his arrest he was planning a fraudulent claim against an insurance company for seriotss injuries which, he alleges, he received in a motor accident at Portsmouth in May last. The claim, 1 according to the police, would have been a considerable one, and was to be made in the name oi Dr. Douglas Colquhoun. During his life of bluff he has posed also as the son of a well-known London jeweller and pawnbroker, and as the nephew of the owner of Shepheard's I Hotel, Cairo. | As a "doctor' he attended a wealthy woman living in Bayswater Road, W., I whom he induced to part with a large j I sum of money because, he said, he was I in trouble with the Medical Council. He i | used to refer to this woman- as his 5 wealthy aunt from New Zealand. She I has declined to prosecute him. I 1