PORTLAND OR DRUCE?

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 57, 30 November 1907, Page 5

PORTLAND OR DRUCE?

A TANGLED KNOT. HE DID NOT LIKE THE CORONEtS. A BIRTH CERTIFICATE. DT TELEGRAM—MESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. London, November 28. Mrs. Hamilton, the sprightly septuagenarian, gave further evidenco, in the interest of the Portland claimant, George Hollaiiiby Druce, in the case against Herbert Druco, who is charged with having-committed perjury in swearing that in December, 1864, he saw Thomas Charles Druce, his father, dead in a collin. "I AM' MYSELF ACAIN " Mrs. Hamilton said that in 1860 she met Thomas Charles Druce at Etiston, and remarked: "I thought you were dead and buried." He replied: "Well, 1 am myself again." Druco seemed annoyed to bo ' addressed as Druce, and showed her a bundle of handkerchiefs with a coronet on 'them, worked by his wife Annie, which had much annoyed him. He used Mrs. Hamilton's scissors to cut the coronets off, and burnt most of. them. Witness recovered and kept one for some years, but burnt it when told it would be no use in the Druce case. refeHtance needed. She last, saw Druce in 1876. He ' remarked: "I am about to die."- She said: "I hope you have repentod of your.-sins." Cross-examined, Mrs., Hamilton admitted that her baptism certificate described, her as the daughter of Robert- and Isabella Atkinson. She had benefited under, the -will of Mrs. Atkinson's mother. : IN SEARCH OF HER FATHER. ' She left .her grandmother when she (witness) was .fourteen,' and came to London alone to seek her father. Looking through a window of the Baker Street bazaar, .she recognised Druce, whom she- had-never seen before, by a photograph. He came out, and provided for her until her father returned from the Continent;' The case , will be resumed oil Friday.