AN EXPENSIVE BITE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 70

AN EXPENSIVE BITE

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, July 8. “Toby M.P.," the Parliamentary diarist of Punch, has come off second best in a libel action brought by a fellow journalist tbis week. It seems from the evidence that the gentleman with the doggy non-de-plume, who is equally well known as Mr H. W. Lucy, has not been on good terms with Mr F. Moy Thomas, the plaintiff in this action. They had been confreres on the “Daily News," but Mr Thomas disliked the other's “superciliousness," and as a consequence they were not on speaking terms.

Now it came to pass tnat recently Mr Thomas wrote a biography of the late Sir John Robinson, for many years the manager of the “Daily News/’ Mr Lucy reviewed the book in “Punch," under the heading “Mangled Remains"—and this libel action against “Punch" and Mr Lucy was the result. Plaintiff complained that the criticism was bitter, spiteful and cruel, and made him appear a selfglorifying ass. “Toby M.P." had in his review charged the biographer with “adding a new terror to death/' and called his book “an unparalleled atrocity." He charged Mr Thomas with “re-telling poor Robinson’s cherished stories as if they were his own, sometimes with a heavy hand brushing off the bloom.'' He described the method adopted by the biographer as “unjust to Robinson, unfair to the public," and the net effect of his criticism was to suggest that Mr Thomas had appropriated much of Sir John’s work as his own. and glorified himself at the expense of his subject.

The defence was that the review was honest criticism, written without malice, and as such was fair comment. Mir Lucy did his case no good, however, when he told that jury that in setting out to review “Fifty Years in Fleet street" he was actuated by a desire to “give a lift to a struggling journalist." Mr Thomas's counsel naturally seized upon this piece of contemptuous patronage, and although “Toby" afterwards withdrew the remark with an expression of regret, it may well have left an unfavourable impression uoon the iurv. Mr Justice Darling

summed up in favour of Mr Thomas. He quoted a passage from Goldsmith's poem on the Islington “Mad Dog" and the Islington godly man: This dog and man at first were friends, But when a pique began. The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad and bit the man. Unlike other dogs who came into that Court, said the Court jester, “Toby” was not entitled even to one bite. The jury found in favour of the plaintiff, and awarded ,£3OO damages. A stay of execution was granted on behalf of the defendants.