KING GEORGE AT A FOOTBALL MATCH.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 12

KING GEORGE AT A FOOTBALL MATCH.

Many sports and pastimes have enjoyed the patronage of British monarchs at different ages — cock-fighting and dugilism among them. For the first time in history^ an English Sovereign was present at a football match on Saturday, the^ 3rd of March, and suitably enough this match was one between the officers of the Royal Navy and the officers of the Army. King George, when Prince of Wales, was a fairly frequent visitor to Service matches, giving his patronage impartially to both codes of football. He attended, too, at least one international match. Queen Mary, in her. early days when as Prinoess May she was firing at the White House with her parents, on several occasions was present at matches on the Richmond ground, and took a keen interest in the game. It had been hoped that Her Majesty would have accompanied the King to Queen's Club, but she decided to visit a hospital instead. Few followed the varying fortunes of the game with a closer interest than King George, unless it was the Prince of Wales, who, having played the game himself at Dartmouth, and being naturally a naval partisan, was able to appreciate with an expert eye the skill' of his fellow officers which gave them the victory. At the end of the match most of the players were plastered with mud, so it, was just as well that they were presented to the King before the contest began. The Navy, as the senior service, had the "honour," in golf language, and after His Majesty had cordially greeted them, the Army officers, headed by the captain, came up to shake hands. Then the two teams assembled round the goalposts, behind which the pavilion is situated, and gave three lusty cheers for the King. THE ' SPANISH PRISONER." The attempts of tho "Spanish Prisoner" to extraot coin from the pockets of confiding New Zealand residents were chronicled in The Post on the 13th instant. Some further particulars are gleaned from the following cable despatch from Madrid to the Toronto Globe: — "With the arrest in Bilbao of a gang of swindlers, and the capture of their tjomplete paraphernalia, the Spanish police believe that they have at last succeeded in putting an. end to the machinations of a rogue who for the last ten years has been known to the Press of Europe and America as 'The Spanish Prisoner.' His agents at The Hague and in San Francisco have been operating extensively of late., "The agenoy at The Hague caused to be published in the English Press notices of the demise of certain persons whose ancestors had fled to Holland during the religious persecution of the middle part of the sixteenth century and had died wealthy without any Dutch heirs. In these oases certain London solicitors became the unconscious agents of 'The Spanish Prisoner,' and actually transmitted, the money necessary to present the claim to The Hague, where it was never heard of again. • "In the house raided by the police in Bilbao were found a collection of photographs, letters, and other documents, and long lists of Spanish, American, and English nameß, with* biographical notes attached, showing how it had been possible to conduct the business with so much plausibility. "Enquiry among the Madrid police shows that several foreigners had from time to time arrived there, who had, fortunately, enquired of the police before looking up 'The Spanish Prisoner,' and had therfore been rescued from his machinations." . •