MONEY-LENDER FOILED.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 296, 20 June 1907, Page 3

MONEY-LENDER FOILED.

LOAN TO AN UNDERGRADUATE CANCELLED. A curious story was told in the King's Bench Division when Mr Cecil John Griffith Coward, a Cambridge undergraduate, and the son of a partner in the well-known legal firm of Hollman, Sons, Coward, and Hawksley, was sued by Messrs Lawrence and Co., a Regent street firm of moneylenders, to recover £75, the first instalment of a promissory note for £300, given in consideration for a loan of £200. Mr Horace Avory, K.C., said that when the elder Mr Coward heard of the affair he wrote to Messrs Lawrence informing them that his son was penniless and a minor. He was defending -the action in the hope that it would be a lesson to his son, and also to moneylenders, who entered into bargains with minors in the hope and belief that they would extract the money from their fathers, who would pay rather than face exposure in court. A strange feature of the oase was the absence of any registration of the younger Mr Coward's birth. His , father said that a search had proved futile, but he produced the family Bible, in which the birth was entered, and the cheque which was paid to the doctor on the night before the birth, which wa&-dated June 7, 1887. Mr Reed, who appeared for Messrs Lawrence, was very anxious to ascertain whether the younger Mr Coward was entitled to money, "On Decern- . ber 4," he asked, "was he in receipt of £600 a yoarP" | "I cannot toll what he was entitl- i ed to," the father replied. Did you allow him £600 a year?— -That is another question. That is hardly fair!-— You must forgive me, but I was under the impression that this money was advanced on my credit, and I object to have money advanced on my credit at 200 j- per cent. Was your son in receipt of £600 a year? — I cannot answer thai. Did you allow him that sum?— No. Will you pledge your oath that your son was penniless in December^ of last year?— l cannot tell you he was penniless then, but he certainly was when I wrote. Mr Justice Lawrence held that Mr Coward was a minor, and made a declaration that the promissory note was null and void.