AMAZING CHARGES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 65, 19 March 1925, Page 5

AMAZING CHARGES

AGAINST TITLED LADY

ALLEGED CONSPIRACY-. TO

DEFRAUD,

(UNITED JRISS ASSOCIATION—COPMIOHT.)

(AOSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLB ASSOCIATION.)

(Eeceived 19th March, 10 a.m.) LONDON, 18th March.

One of the most amazing cases for many years has opened before" Mr. Justice Shearman and a special jury. After the failure of attempts made at ' the Judge's suggestion fo reach a settlement, counsel esplained that Mrs. Muriel Waterhouse, as executrix for her late husband, whom she married in 1919, was proceeding against Sir David Wilson Barker, ex-captain of the Royal Naval Reserve, his wife, and "a man named Sheldon, all of Hawkhurst, Kent. The statement of claim alleges that Lady Wilson Barker obtained from Mr. Waterhouse large sums by means of fraudulent representation, and that Sheldon and Lady Wilson Barker participated in a fraudulent conspiracy for the same purpose. The plaintiff seeks an account of these payments, and, alternatively, damages. The plaintiff's counsel said that the conspiracy began in 1909. Frank Waterhouse, the son of wealthy parents, had inherited £100,000. When he was staying at Harrogate with his mother in 1896, when he was forty, he made the acquaintance of Mrs. Wilson Barker, ■who gained Mrs. Waterhouse's deep affection, won an ascendancy over a doting mother and her son, and became a frequent visitor at the Waterhouse's home for years. \

The two women carried on a correst pondence of a deeply religious character. Nevertheless, counsel alleged that Mrs. Wilson Barker for years had carried on an intrigue with Frank Waterhouse, and then subsequently, with Sheldon's assistance, had stripped Frank of every farthing, with the result that he died in 1923 insolvent. The conspiracy was only discovered after Waterhouse's death.

Mrs. Wilson Barker pretended .-that, a solicitor had discovered their liaison, and was threatening to tell her husband, and that only secret payments could provent exposure. She imposed on Frank an oath of secrecy, and then, ostensibly to buy the threateners silence, obtained large sums from Waterhouse, sometimes £2000 at a time, all paid in bank notes Frank Waterhouse was a man of weak character, and later became an invalid. Sir Herbert Waterhouso would give evidence that the defendant Sheldon came to him as head of the Waterhouse family and said that the origin of the trouble was that Mrs. Waterhouso had made both her 'sons promise to give Mrs. Wilson Barker £4000 each after her death. They had not carried out that promise. Mrs. Wilson Barker and Sheldon considered other means of obtaining the £8000, and Sheldon helped to compose some of her letters. They obtained much more than £SCOO.

When the claim was first made against Mrs. Wilson Barker she obtained a certificate that she was in a state of enfeeblement bordering on lunacy, and deceived another doctor into certifying her as mentally not normal. She also deceived her own solicitor, yet when she was watch by inquiry agents it was found that she was following the -normal occupations of a lady.

Captain Sir David Wilson Barker, captain-superintendent of the Nautical Training College, H.M,S. Worcester, 1892-1919, was born in 1858, and in' 1885 married Magdalen Mulligan. He has written a number of works on the sea and navigation. He was knighted in 1920.