BASELESS BELIEF

Evening Star, Issue 21624, 20 January 1934, Page 13

BASELESS BELIEF

THE CASE AGAINST HADDON BOUND OVER FOR THREE YEARS Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, January 19. (Received January 20, at 1 p.m.) Haddon pleaded guilty under extreme provocation. He was bound over for three years, • with two sureties of £IOO, and was ordered to refrain from making or affirmiiig similar statements. The judge said that one of the reasons for taking this course was that the person against whom intolerable threats were made had expressed a desire, through the Attorney-General, to be in no way vindictive. The Attorney-General (Sir Thomas Inskip) said the subject of the charges was an obsession on the part of Haddon that he was the illegitimate son of the •Duke of Clarence. Haddon claimed that he had been born in London on September 28, 1890. The Duke of Clarence went on an Indian tour in November, 1889, ending in 1890. Documents showed, that Haddon’s mother bore three children, including a boy in 1899, not to her then husband, but to a Lieutenant Rogers. Haddon’s mother was addicted to drink. Because she had in her mind that she was secretly married to the Duke of Clarence she brought up the boy in that belief. Throughout his life Haddon had found himself pursued by notoriety and mockery. ■ ,

“ Unless you wish to end in a madhouse the sooner you depart from this baseless belief the better. It seems that it has rested on you as a curse,” said the judge.

[The charge against Clarence Haddon was of “ uttering, knowing the contents thereof, a letter demanding money from the King with menaces and without reasonable or probable cause.”]