CARD PROSECUTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13483, 6 July 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

CARD PROSECUTION.

CHARGE 'OF CHEATING AT BRIDGE. An extraordinary story of alleged cheating .at cards, by which a number of Cambridge undergraduates suspect themselves to have been victimised, was told at the Cambridge Police Court, when there was a crowded attendance of University men. *

.The persons against whbui the charge was made were both of highly respectable appearance and apparent" substance, named Vernon Cecil Ellingham Musgrave, alias George Gordon, alias George Gleicer, and Harold Collinge. Mr. Low, K.C., prosecuted, and Mr. C. F. Gill, K.C., defended. The Mayor of Cambridge and half a. dozen brother magistrates, and also Colonel R. Townley Caldwell, master of Corpus, and Mr. Sedley Taylor, of Trinity College, were on the Bench. Musgrave failed to appear, and his bail was estreated.

The evidence showed that the defendants arrived at Cambridge on April 26 and put up at the Bull Hotel. Musgrave had met an" undergraduate of Trinity College named Townley Caldwell at • Malta, and he renewed the acquaintance. Caldwell called upon him and Collinge in company with another undergraduate, Allen Green Aguew, of Trinity Hall. Musgrave soon ingratiated himself with the young fellows. He had a motor-car, in which he used to take them and their friends for rides, and he also invited them to luncheons and dinners. Presently a. game of bridge was suggested, and thereafter cards appeared to have been played with regularity, bridge being varied by poker and banker.

Though the young men were losing money it did not occur.to them that there might have been unfair play, until Arthur Wynell Tate, an undergraduate of Trinity Hall, reflected that the defendants seemed to have had a really remarkable run of luck. He himself had lost £21, but he had not paid over the money because he did not consider that the games were closed. One morning in May he found himself alone in the defendants' sitting-room, and opening a bridge box discovered two packs of cards. One had on the back a representation of a man on a bicycle, and he thought' that by an ingenious arrangement the markings indicated the character of the cards. He took the packs to Agriew, who had paid £8 15s for, losses, and together they went to the police. ■ ■ ' The defendants were arrested at their hotel, and indignantly denied any fraud. A detective later discovered. another pack of cards, alleged to be marked. Mrs. Collinge had an interview with her husband after his arrest, and when told he was", charged with cheating, she, it is alleged, said, "Well, they have had the motor-cur out and dinners which they did not pay for; what could they expect?" Mr. Gill submitted that' there was not sufficient evidence to send the case for trial. It rested solely on suspicion. Coilintje gave no nupnort to any theory of conspiracy to defraud. - ■■'. ■ : :^: " • ''

Collinge, who declared that he was innocent, was,: however, committed for trial.