WIDOW’S TALE OF PALACE POISONER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17890, 5 July 1926, Page 6

WIDOW’S TALE OF PALACE POISONER.

CROWN MINISTER SUED AND PRINCE ATTACKED. LONDON, June 21. “ I intend to fight for the vindication of my husband while I have an ounce of strength,” said Mrs Laura Madden, the widow of Major Travers Madden, former Controller of Palaces for the Maharajah of Alwar. Mrs Madden is claiming £SOOO damages for alleged libel against the Earl of Winterton, Under Secretary for India. Wearing a black robe, she tearfully conducted her own case, saying she was too poor to engage counsel, tiecause her husband's effects had been confiscated. SINK OF INIQUITY. Mrs Madden said the case arose out of the death of her husband, who, she alleged had been poisoned in 1916 by a woman in the Maharajah’s household, who had been acquitted of another murder at Allahabad, in 1912. She alleged that the Indian courts had hushed up all her attempts at an inquiry. She said she had appealed fruitlessly •• to Lord Chelmsford and Lord Reading, former Yiceroys, and to the Earl of Winterton, for an exhumation order, which would have shown that her husband’s brain had been removed to hide traces of arsenical poisoning, refuting the doctor's suggestion ..that death had been due to hard drinking. Mrs Madden attacked the administration of the Alwar State, which she said was a sink of iniquity. The Maharajah posed as a pillar of the Empire, and made flowery speeches, but he hated the British, being a hypocrite of the worst magnitude, who ought to be horsewhipped for cruelty, DEAD MAN’S CHARACTER. The woman said she claimed damages because the Earl of Winterton, in a letter to Colonel Wedgwood, the Labour M.P.. to whom she appealed after having returned in a dying condition from India, declared that her grievances were negligible because her mind was unhinged owing to the death of her husband, who was not an estimable character. Colonel Wedgwood told her that the case could only be reopened in the Law Courts. The Attorney-General (Sir Douglas Hogg) counsel for Lord Winterton, said the Allahabad woman was not identical with the alleged poisoner of Madden. The hearing was adjourned. The Maharajah of Alwar, who is in London, was a striking jewel-decked figure at the last Imperial Conference.