£10,000 ROMANCE DENIAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 September 1934, Page 12

£10,000 ROMANCE DENIAL

RAILWAY TICKET CASE. LONDON, July 24. William Derrick Wordsworth, 23, described as an author, of Bleak House, Shinfield, Reading, was at Reading yesterday fined £2, with £1 costs and £2 solicitor’s fee, for travelling on the Great Western Railway without having previously paid his fare, and with intent to avoid payment. Detective Inspector Plumb said Wordsworth was supposed to be the young man who, according to reports, received a legacy of £lO,OOO, which carried a condition that he did not marry the woman who was now his wife. Mr P. W. Pino, prosecuting, said on June 11 Wordsworth and his wife travelled from Reading to London with cheap day tickets. The wife entered a nursing home, where she remained until June 20, when they both returned to Reading. There Wordsworth gave up the tickets which had been taken out on Juno 11, the date having been somewhat clumsily altered. He afterwards told the police that when he had paid the nursing homo fees it had left him without any ready cash, so he altered the tickets. Wordsworth now said he was very sorry about the whole affair. In March Mr Wordsworth, who was then 23, a great-grandson of the poet, was married to Miss Cecily Deeks, a 17-year-old actress. He was then reported to have said that he had sacrificed a legacy of £lO,OOO, which was left to him by his grandfather, the Rev. John Wordsworth, on condition that he did not marry until he was 25.

In May, Messrs Pennington and Son, solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, wrote “various statements have appeared to the effect that Mr William Derrick Wordsworth forfeited a legacy of £lO,OOO upon his recent marriage. We are instructed by members of the Wordsworth family to state that there is no foundation whatever for this statement.”