THEIR FATHER'S HONOUR.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 4538, 23 May 1913, Page 5

THEIR FATHER'S HONOUR.

GREAT NAMES BESMIRCHED. Julian Hawthorne and Dr. William J. Morton, bearers of two of the-most honoured names in America, are in gaol to-day. says a New York correspodent. because they lent the prestige of their names to schemes for defrauding mining .investors. After a trial lasting seventy days both were found guilty, and hotli sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. Hawthorne is the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the famous American novelist, and. Morton is the son of the famous physician who discovered the value of ether as an anaesthetic.

Morton, who is past eighty year' of age, declared that all liis life he had ex|*>cted a great calamity to tiefal him. “Tf every man, woman, and child who had been saved by ether from pain and suffering paid the Merton family its due, it would be one of the wealthiest families in the world,” lie .-aid, as no was being ledaway to tin coll Julian Hawthorne is about -lxty-seveil, end inherited muon of his father’s literarv talent, which in the present rase, the prosecution allegedj he had degraded hv writing sed ietive mining literature M the instance of a shady promoter.

The five indictments on which the trial was based dealt with the promotion of the TcmagainC Cobalt Mines (Ltd.), the Elk' Lake Cobalt Mines (Ltd.), the Montreal James Mines J,td.)_, the Hawthorne Silver end Iron Alines (Ltd.), and the Julian Hawthorne Company. The evidence showed that £120.000 was obtained through those promotions, lut hew much went to Hawthorne and Morton was not stated. The P"b)io Prosecutor, in demanding exemplary sentences, argued that the time had arrived when the crime of bamboozling the gullible public by attaching mell-known and respected name- to the literature of company promotions should he punished. .He suggested ilia people generally, more •T-liecuily clergymen, perhaps, and widows, did not read I set ween (he lines of company prospectuses, and they lost their money on the strength ot mere names, the owners of which became rich by allowing those names to become besmirched.