EXIT THE AFFIDAVIT MAKER

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 312, 25 April 1911, Page 2

EXIT THE AFFIDAVIT MAKER

Robert Caldwell died at New York; aged seventy-five years. He was as mad as a March hare when, three years ago, he electrified the whole of London — and the whols cf the English-speaking , world — with the most amazing yarn that has ever been told m a British court of justice. It was during the last days of the notorious • Dnice case, when Mr Herbert Druce was prosecuted for alleged perjury by another member of that astonishing family, that Robert Caldwel], the old Irish-American affidavit maker and sensation fabricator, appeared before Mr Chichele Plowden, the Marylebone stipendiary, and told a story that beat Munchausen and all the old romancers. He came to swear that the late T. C. Druce and the fifth Duke of Portland, were one and the same. An old, old man, and feeble m everything but speech and imagination, he recounted hia lifelong friendship with the fifth Duke, told how he helped him m the Baker street bazaar, and how he earned His Grace's everlasting gratitude by curing him of the perplexing and annoying disfigurement of "a bulbous nose " with a mysterious and secret remedy. The crowd of high-born dames assembled on Mr Plowden's glittering dais rustled with excitement. This, indeed, was a comedy worth paying box prices for— a rich slice out of real life, and . a Duke thrown m. In the afternoon, when Caldwell continued his thrilling serial, the court was packed with the most fashionable audience ever seen m a police court. Caldwell, snuffl'ng and whining and shedding large splashes of tears, went on and told how he and his dear friend the Duke arranged the mock death, of His Grace, fas T. C. Druce) and the mock funeral, how he himself bought the lead to go into the coffin, and how the Duke, after paying all the expenses of the tragic comedy, whisked himself away to the vaults of Welbeck. Caldwell nailed the •' spoof " coffin down ; Caldwell served out the black gloves and the crape hatbands* Caldwell marshalled .the bogus procession and. saw the cortege well on its way to Highgate and the Druce family vault. And then— Mr Horace Avory stepped m, with his quiet, sarcastic tongue and his deliberate manner, and cooked the Caldwell goose and the Druce duckling-^once and for al) He proved Caldwell to be the liar of the century, a professional blackmailer and forger, and what ,is known m America as an affidavit maker. So the wretched bubble burst, and Caldw ( ell fled, to New York, where on his extradition being demanded, he waa confined for the rest of his days iii the City Asylum for the Insane. He died of parancea which is twin brother to general paralysis *