MONEY-LENDER AND CLIENT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6120, 5 March 1898, Page 5

MONEY-LENDER AND CLIENT.

A LADY GAMBLER. The action of Jay v. Sykes came to an end in London in January, after a trial of five days. The case revealed something more than the ordinary story of moneylender and needy client. It disclosed, on the part of a lady of society, a career of reckless extravagance which resulted in financial embarrassments, from which the lady gambler sought to free herself by a series of audacious forgeries, backed up by ingenious and unblushing perjury. The facts of the case lay in a nutshell. Mr Daniel Jay, a bill discounter, claimed from Sir Tatton and Lady Sykes a sum of nearly ( including interest at the exorbitant rate of 60 per cent^ upon five promissory notes bearing the signatures of both defendants. Lady Sykes admitted liability, but Sir Tatton bluntly affirmed that the signatures purporting to be his to the promissory notes and to the letters authorising Mr Jay to pay the money to Lady Sykes were forgeries. Forgery or no forgery was, therefore, the question for the jury, for Lady Sykes swore positively that Sir Tatton had signed all the documeats in her presence. The case was a remarkable one, both from the character of the dramatis person® and from the diametrically opposed tales they told. Sir Tatton is a man of seventy-two, the eldest son of the eccentric Sir Tatton Sykes, well-known for his sporting proclivities. The son seems to ha.ve inherited both his father's eccentricity and love of the turf. He divides his time between breeding yearlings and building churches. He avoids society, never going out, except to race meetings. He has a large rent-roll, a handsome income, a country seat at Sledmere, in Yorkshire, with some 34,000 acres, a house m Grosvenor street, and a cottage at Newmarket. His wife, Lady Jessica, who is much younger, married him twentyfour years ago, and is well - descended, being the eldest daughter of the Right Hon George Cavendish-JBentinck, and great granddaughter of the third Duke of Portland. Coming fresh from her governess's hands, the young girl, introduced into no society but that met with on the racecourse, took to betting on a system and gambling on the Stock Exchange, with the inevitable result — the accumulation of a large number of private debts. It was her struggle to extricate herself from these that led to litigation. Sir Tatton at the end of 1896 was in communication with his solicitors about the heavy liabilities contracted by his wife, and in December of that year he advertised in the papers his repudiation of liability for her debts, and took from her a promise in writing that (in consideration of his paying .£12,000 to discharge her liabilities, and guaranteeing her £5000 a year) she would not speculate any more en the Stock Exchange or bet for credit on the turf. At this time, apparently nothing was said by Lady Sykes about the debts to Jay. More and more claims followed, and at last in May, 1897, Sir Tatton heard for the first time of Jay's existence. Mr Jay did not go into the box, but Lady Sykes came up smiling with a strange but plausible story. According to her, Sir Tatton was a wealthy, parsimonious " old hunk3," who never paid for anything. She had to keep both his establishments going, and to do so had to borrow money. The debts, once started, kept growing like a snowball. She was always trying to get Sir Tatton to settle, but he would never do so.^ He always wanted to postpone the evil day, and as he was singularly ignorant of business, he made an arrangement with his wife that, instead of supplying money from time to time, he should, lend his signatura on the understanding that ' she should in some way manage to provide the money periodically and involve him in no responsibility, In this way he became a party to various securities, and by means of renewals a very large liability was kept floating without his being driven, except in cases of necessity, to make provision for it. When financial crises came she had to persuade him to come down with j the cash. In spite of his parsimony she knew how to manage him. It was easier to get a large sum out of him than a small one, and although he was like a naughty child with regard to money matters, -of ten throwing dividend warrants into the waste-paper basket, he would sign any- j thing she put before him. Unfortunately, having a lack of memory in business matters that amounted almost to imbecility, he had a habit afterwards of repudiating his signatures to cheques and bills. Hence his professed ignorance of Mr Jay and Mr Jay's securities. To support her assertion of her husband's imbecility Lady Sykes produced her son's tutor, who considered that Sir Tatton was suffering from incipient insanity, because he wore seven or eight coats at once. Lady Sykes's story was told with a cool assurance and a quick wit that had a retort ready for every question, however disconcerting. Her tale, however, was jusb a little "too artistic." She struck several heavy snags. The first of these was the position of Sir Tatton's bank account. His bank at Leeds allowed him to overdraw his account to a far larger extent than the whole amount of Jay's promissory notes, and charged him only 5 per cent on the overdraft. Why then should Sir Tatton, if he wanted money, borrow at 60 per cent from a money lender? Then when the account of Sir Tatton's payments for household expenses was put in evidence, it showed that for the last six years Sir Tatton had made payments for household expenses amounting to a yearly average of During the time Lady Sykes had accused him of parsimony he had, in addition to many other sums of money, paid her for her own private use one lump sum of .£IO,OOO and another of .£16,000. The dissimilarity of handwriting between the signatures on Jay's securities and those admitted to be Sir Tatton's was another awkward point to get ovei\ The usual number of graphologists were called, but the testimony of Sir Tatton's banker, who would never have passed the bills, and the evidence of the jury's own eyes, clinched the matter. Unfortunately, too, for herself, Lady Sykes had chosen some unfortunate dates on which to obtain Sir Tatton's signature to the incriminating documents. On Oct. 2, 1896, when she declared she saw him sign one of them in England, he seems, as a matter of fact, to have been staying in Brussels with his nephew. And on Jan. 2, 1897, the date of one of the bills which Lady Sykes swore he signed in London, he was shown by greatly preponderating evidence to have been at Sledmere, whither he went on New Year's Day. Sir Tatton, in the witness-box, certainly showed that he possessed no very reliable memory, but he gave his evidence intelligibly, and exhibited none of that softening of the brain with which he must undoubtedly have been afflicted if the whole of the Jay transactions had faded from his mind. His story, indeed, although largely corroborated, was scarcely less incredible than his wife's. He suggested that two or three years after his marriage, Lady Sykes in her hurry to .get possession of the house in Grosvenor Street, had forged his signature to the lease of it, and that ever since although she had been living on friendly terms with him and accompanying him on his travels, shs had— in her career of prodigality— been forgin» his name time after time. Each time he hushed the scandal up and paid like a saint until at last he could pay no longer He put his foot down by running awav to get up his pluck for the final expost • told his wife to go to Patagonia, and finally made his appearance in Court to testify to the very wicked and criminal proceedings on the part of his wife. The two characters m i gh t well have been the creation of some imaginative novelist's bram. The Judge directed the documents to be impounded Ladv s^iT however, did not-like Lord VilliamNevili -fly to Spam but increased her reputation for imperturbable nerve by giKa largou&nner party at the 'Savoy Hold