CLAIM TO ROYAL BIRTH

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 January 1935, Page 8

CLAIM TO ROYAL BIRTH

Haddon Sentenced for Breach of His Bond

DEMAND MADE FOR MONEY THREAT TO SELL STORY (United Press Association—By Eloctrio Telegraph Copy rigid) Received 2.45 p.m. to-day. LONDON, Jan. 17. Clarence Gay Gordon Haddon was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for a breach of his three years’ bond. He allegedly repeated the claim that he was the Duke of Clarence’s son, and told the secretary of the South Islington Conservatives Association that he wanted financial recognition, otherwise he would sell the story to the foreign Press and parade London with a sandwich board.

Haddon previously pleaded guilty at Old Bailey to a charge of “uttering, knowing the contents thereof, a letter demanding money from the King without reasonable or probable cause to lie untrue.”

He pleaded extreme provocation and was bound over for three years with two sureties of £IOO and was ordered to refrain from making or affirming similar statements.

The judge said that one of the reasons for taking this course was that the person against whom the intolerable threats were made had expressed a desire through the Attorney-General that he would be nowise vindictive. The Attorney-General said the subject of the charges was an obsession on the part of Haddon that lie was the illegitimate sou of the Duke of Clarence. Haddon claimed to have lioon born in London on September 18, 1890. The Duke of Clarence went on an Indian tour in November 1889, ending it in 1890. Documents show that Hadcton’s mother bore three children, including a boy in 1899, not to her then husband, but to Lieut. Rogers. Haddon’s mother was addicted to drink. Because she had in her mind that she secretly married the Duke of Clarence she brougnt up the boy in that belief and throughout his life Haddon found himself pursued by notoriety and mockery. “Unless you wish to end in the madhouse the sooner you depart from this baseless idea the better. It seems it has rested on you as a curse,” said the judge.