DRUCE CASE PRISONER.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1027, 17 January 1911, Page 5

DRUCE CASE PRISONER.

.» — . • "MISS" ROBINSON RELEASED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. London, January 15. The newspaper "Weekly Dispatch" states that "Miss" Robinson, sentenced for perjury in the Druce case, has been released from Aylesbury prison on the order of the Home Secretary (Sir. Winston Churchill). ' . ' ,

Mary Robertson was a ; witness in one of the Druce cases in connection with that family's claim to tho Duke of Portland's estates. She lepresented herself to bo a single woman, born in America in 1851, the daughter of John and Louise Alexandra Robinson, of Grcdn Hill, Al-: leghany Mountains; aud. sh£ said that sho was taken as a girl of ten to Eng1861, when she. first,met the Duke of Portland. It ivas proved' that sho 'was really born at Wandsworth, England, on May 25,. 1841, the 'daughter of James Webb, police constable.' She- was at school'in: London and in. Yorkshire.- As Mary Ann Webb- she was-married on March 17, 1863,'t0 William Robinson, of Leeds, butcher,, where they lived till 18G8. In that year, according to her story in the Druce case, sho met' Dickens, in Boston, Massachusetts. If the newly-ascer-. tained facts (all supported by documentary. evidence) are correct, she was not a girl of 17 in 1868, When sho said she entered, the Duke's service, as outside Secretary, but a married. woman of 27, .already tho mother of two children. She '.was subsequently in New Zealand , for many years, living part of the time at Waimate, and . part . in Christchurch, where sho was a boardinglionse-keeper.