A QUEER CRICKITT MATCH

Dunstan Times, Issue 2095, 17 September 1901, Page 6

A QUEER CRICKITT MATCH

PLAINTIFF CAUGHT IX THE SLIPS. r FROM the Evening Star's Correspondent. July 26. Sir Francis Jeune and a special jury have been umpiring in a three days' Crickitt match on the Probate Ground, and after some hard hitting on both sides have noballed the plaintiffs side pretty effectually. Mr Tom Shelton Crickitt, a solicitor, propounded what he alleged to be the will of his cousin, which ran thus : " This is my will. I leave to my mother, brother, and cousin (Shelton Crickitt) all I possess, to be equally divided between them.—Annie Blanche ' Crickitt, Witnesses: H. M. Crickitt, A. F. Crickitt." This will, he alleged, was made in May or June, 1891. Miss Crickitt's mortal innings closed last February. Her father opposed the grant of probate'on the. ground that the will was not executed in May or June, 1891, and claimed that his daughter died intestate, and that as her father be was her Bert oi kin and entitled to her estate. Mrs Ebza Crickitt. Miss Crickitt's mother, a~!op'.id the plaintiff's pleadings. Mr and Mrs Crickitt were married in 1864. and had two children—Mr Percy Scott Hill Crickitt, a barrister, and f ie alleged testatrix, who was born m 1869 In 1871 Mr and Mrs Crickitt separated. Mrs Crickitt had a life interest in £4o.OGQ, which on her death passed to her son and daughter, who on attaining twenty-one each acquived a reversionary interest in £23.000.

1890 was an exciting year for Crickui. Miss Crickitt came of age that year, an J became engaged to her cousin. "n the autumn Mrs Crickitt went to Paris and picked up a few unconsidered trifles at the Ma?osins due Louvre. She was caught, and Mr Shelton Crickitt had to hasten over and show that her action wa.s due to kleptomania in order to obtain her release. When Miss Crickitt at this crisis went through her mother's boxes she found in one of them, to her dismay, a letter from her cousin-fiance to her mother beginning "My darling queen," and containing such affectionate passages ns "of course you were told that you were lovely and pretty —no one could honestly say otherwise —and you know what I and'many others think of you in a simple dressing gown. . . . Darling Elise. I am thinking of you day and night. I have missed you so much lately, and my dry profession has become so much drier since we were married. . . . With nil my love, darling, believe me your true husband. T. Shelton Crickitt."

An eternal, unutterable loathing would have been the natural feeling that Miss Crickitt would have conceived towards her cousin ; but 'according to his story only a "little unpleasantness" resulted, and then all went smoothly as before. Although no breach existed between Mr Crickitt and his father while he was engaged to a respectable and would-be wealthy lady, yet, so Mr Crickitt's tale ran, his two sisters Harriet and Adelaide had to come to his office and lunch at various taverns in the neighborhood to get a chance of meeting his fiancee. Mr Crickitt put his side in, but did not elect to bat himself. His sisters, however, went into the witness box and told a very strange tale. According to these young ladies they met their brother and his fiancee one fine day in May or June, 1901. at the Rainbow Tavern'. After lunch Shelton went out to smoke, and then Annie suddenly said: "I want to make my will." Harriet suggested "Why not call Shelton in?" but Annie said " I don't wish him to know anything at all about it." Pens and ink were handy on the mantelpiece, but the only papers they could find wute some crumpled sheets in tiie wasie paper basket. They were fished out, Annie dictated her will, and Harriet wrote it. out, and after three or .our attempts produced a fairly respectable document, on a piece of paper which apparently had had some accounts written on it. Harriet trimmed the paper with a pair of scissors she had, and all three signed this wastepaper will. Annie pledged the other two to secrecy. Harriet took the will home, put it in a silver-edged envelope which had contained a weddmg card, and forgot all about it. Even when Annie died and Shelton was speculating with his sister whether there was a will, the lattter remembered nothing at all about it until Shelton suggested that she should write to a Mrs Green, with whom Annie had lived. Adelaide Crickitt, who corroborated her sister's extraordinarv story, declared, that Annie had always seemed most affectionate towards Shelton, but found it rather hard to explain to Sir Edward Clarke why. if that were so. she should have written thus to her brother Percy : " I hope to goodness that rascal Shelton will not hurt mamma in order to get the money sooner. T behove him capable of anything." At this point Mr Dcane declared his innings closed, the plaintiff himself not facing the break-backs which Sir Edward Clarke had in store for him. What those were Sir .Edward foreshadowed in his openiii" when lie explained thai so anxious were Miss Crickitt's mother and Shelton to get her to make a will that they conspired together at a, time when she was absolutely insane, and in April, 1897, Shelton forged a telegram to her saying : " Mater coming to Sutton today. Please, sign what she wants.—Percy." What Mrs Crickitt herself thought of Sheldon —sir Edward Clarke said—could be seen from her own letters, for on March 28, after the will had been discovered, she wrote : " The whole story is such a cock and bull affair that no honorable person can approve of or ought to support if," and to another person she wrote : " S.C. is at the bottom of it. The signature certainly looks like my daughter's. I believe it in my heart to be a clever imitation." Sir Edward Clarke's case was that (he words of the will had at some time or another been written on this piece of paper, which hail already Annie Crickitt's signature upon it. After a friend of Aunie Crickitt, had told the jury that from 1891 onwards Annie | had always referred to Shelton as a. contemptible cad. and that at the end of 1895 j she became subject, to delusions, Mrs Har- I net Fuller, Mrs Crickitt's servant, stag- | gered Mr Deaie by declaring that Mrs Crickitt and her nephew Shelton had lived . ;is man and wife. Sir Edward Clarke clinched the matter by producing Mrs i Crickitt's defence in an action for slander | brought by Shelton against Mr and Mrs , Crickitt in 1895, in which Mrs Crickitt pleaded that in October, 1890, Shelton represented to her that her husband was dead,

induced her to consent to many Sheltoi as soon as she nad certain proof of Uh© alleged death, and to live with him>ae man and wife for several years. After this disclosure, Mr Deane saw that some explanation was called upon from Shelton, who accordingly faced the music. Sir Edward Clarke soon bowled him out. Shelton had to admit that while he was engaged to his cousin he was not only living as man and wife with her mother, but was keeping a woman named Wheeler. After these avowals the confession that at the time of his cousin's death he was in financial low water, and that he owed £3OO to his present solicitor, was a trivial one. In 1896 Shelton marked a Miss Sims, yet in 1897 he was still carrying on with his cousin, for on April 1 she wrote: " Mrs Green has told me of the deep affection you possess. I have thought over the conversation we had together, and in conclusion have decided to accept your offer." At this time Blanche was being taken care of, under the doctors advice. In 1895 this gay Lothario formed a society for the protection of married women, which, needless to say, never got any money, never did any work, and was wound up in 1898. Sir Edward Clarke had the wretched Shelton in such a tangle in his attempt to explain what document his cousin signed on April 23 on the strength of the forged telegram that the jury intervened at this stage, and found that the will was not duly executed. Costs were given against Shelton, Crickitt, and Mrs Crickitt, and the President, holding that they had been shown that the body of the alleged will was not the body of the document to which the signature was affixed, ordered that all documents signed or purporting to be signed by Annie Blanche Crickitt should be impounded. The score book of this Crickitt match will doubtless be handed to the Public Prosecutor.