For a start, there was the uncanny likeness between the photograph of T. C. Druce and the photograph alleged to be a portrait of the 5th Duke, which had been shown to prospective investors. (A number of persons to whom T. C. Druce was unknown, on being presented with several photographs, picked out that of T. C. Druce as the duke; a number of persons to whom the 5th Duke was unknown picked out a photograph of him as T. C. Druce.) Then there were the mannerisms. Those who knew T. C. Druce or the duke all agreed on the unapproachable and haughty manner of both men. Furthermore, the two men shared certain physical infirmities: the 5th Duke suffered from a skin disease that gave him a jaundiced appearance. T. C. Druce, likewise, presented a jaundiced complexion, and a number of his children and grandchildren were allegedly afflicted with the same skin condition. Druce and the duke were both also described as being about five feet nine inches in height, sturdily built and weighing about thirteen stone.
The two men also shared marked peculiarities of diet and habit. Both T. C. Druce and the 5th Duke were known to be abstemious with regard to alcohol and tobacco, were modest eaters, had an objection to butcher’s meat, and a partiality for fish and chicken. Other unusual traits common to the two men included: a tendency to secrecy and reserve, together with a determined refusal to discuss their past or family background; a passion for subterranean wanderings; the wearing of wigs; methodical habits; unexpected appearances and disappearances for long periods of time; a desire to avoid sunlight (on account of the skin complaint); dislike of being personally addressed; and massive wealth. There was also the proximity in age between the two: Druce’s given birth date, 1793, was just seven years before that of the 5th Duke, in 1800.
But in Amanda’s eyes, the most convincing evidence for Druce and the duke being one and the same person was what appeared to be the virtually exact correspondence of the presence in public life of T. C. Druce with the disappearance from it of the duke, and vice versa. Thus from 1816 to 1818, T. C. Druce’s name appeared in parish registers at Bury St Edmunds, as overseer of the poor. Family evidence showed that, during this period, his wife Elizabeth Crickmer lived with him in comfort and luxury, in the fine house on Great Market. This period would have corresponded with the 5th Duke’s education, of which one would have expected to find records at a public school or university. But no record was given of him being educated at any college or other institution.
Then, suddenly, the name of T. C. Druce completely vanished from the records at Bury. In early 1820 Elizabeth was to be found living alone in a house rated at only £2 per year, having to be excused payments of 2 shillings annual poor rate owing to her poverty. Corresponding with the complete disappearance of T. C. Druce, however, abundant records of the 5th Duke appeared. In 1819 he was gazetted as an army officer, various records showing subsequent promotions. From 1824 to 1826 he sat as Member of Parliament for King’s Lynn; and up to 1835, biographical accounts of the duke’s brothers referred to him being associated with them.
But then, from 1835 onwards, all reference to the 5th Duke in public records seemed mysteriously to disappear. In 1854 the 4th Duke died, and the dukedom devolved on his surviving eldest son; and yet in The Times obituary of the 4th Duke, no reference was made to his heir. The funeral of the 4th Duke was attended by every male relation, except his successor. And at several social gatherings in 1846 attended by male members of the Bentinck family, the 5th Duke (then Marquess of Titchfield) was remarkably absent. In 1851 a Corn Exchange was opened at Worksop, the market town nearest Welbeck; the ducal family attended the event, all except the Marquess of Titchfield. On the other hand, this blank period in the duke’s life corresponded with the time when T. C. Druce opened the Baker Street Bazaar and began his meteoric rise through the furniture business. It was the time of his setting up home with Annie May, starting his second family, and becoming a prosperous and well-known – albeit reclusive – figure in the London business world.
Then, in 1864, after Druce had ostensibly died, the 5th Duke suddenly reappeared in the records as mysteriously as he had vanished in the 1830s. This was the point at which he moved permanently from Cavendish House in London to Welbeck Abbey, and commenced the extensive tunnelling operations for which he was to become notorious. From now on, in fact, records relating to the 5th Duke were plentiful: right up to his death in 1879, and his discreet burial in Kensal Green.
In the course of her duties at the Druce office, Amanda also met some of the key witnesses in the case. They included an elderly and dignified gentleman with a stoop and a drooping white handlebar moustache, by the name of Robert Caldwell. Caldwell told Amanda the same story as he was subsequently to give in court. He informed her that he was a retired accountant, now seventy-one years of age. He had been born in Ireland, although he was now a naturalized American citizen and lived in New York. He had left Ireland in 1857 at the age of twenty-one, and had travelled via England as far afield as New Zealand and India, seeking a cure for an unsightly affliction from which he suffered – a condition then known as a ‘bulbous nose’ (and today known by the rather more technical term of ‘rhinophyma’).*4
After a long and fruitless search for an effective treatment for his condition, Caldwell told Amanda that he had finally been cured of his ailment by a captain of the British Army in India, of the 3rd Foot Regiment, by the name of Arthur Wellesley Joyce. He had then returned to England, where he demonstrated his cure to the eminent English physician, Sir Morrell Mackenzie. Impressed, Sir Morrell had introduced Caldwell to the 5th Duke of Portland, who suffered from a similar condition. Those events took place around 1864. Caldwell proceeded to treat the duke for his affliction, curing him in about sixty days. Over that period, he was paid handsomely in cash by the duke, and visited him both at Welbeck Abbey – where he saw the celebrated underground ballroom and picture gallery – and at the Baker Street Bazaar. Throughout his time with the duke, Caldwell told Amanda, it was manifestly clear to him that his Grace had a double identity as the furniture salesman, T. C. Druce. He had even seen the duke don a false beard when he visited him as ‘Druce’ at the Baker Street Bazaar. As the duke, he was always clean-shaven. Caldwell had also met T. C. Druce’s/the duke’s wife and children, at the Baker Street premises.
The final part of Robert Caldwell’s story, however, had Amanda reeling in shock. In December 1864, he told her, he had been approached by the duke, who informed him that he wished to do away with his dual persona by ‘killing off’ his alter ego of Druce. To this end, the duke asked Caldwell to have a coffin made – or rather a box like a coffin, only not so tapered at the end – and to fill it with lead. This, claimed Caldwell, he duly did, with the aid of an old man and a carpenter, purchasing 200 pounds of lead and screwing it down in the coffin. He subsequently organized the mock funeral of T. C. Druce on 31 December: a splendid affair with many coaches. That was the last that Caldwell saw of the duke or of T. C. Druce; he remained in England for five or six years, finally emigrating to New York in 1871. He had contacted George Hollamby from the United States, he said, after reading about the case early in February 1907, in the newspaper the New York World.
Another key witness who was frequently to be seen about the Druce office was a dark-haired and sharp-featured lady from New Zealand, about fifty years of age, by the name of Miss Mary Robinson. She was always smartly turned out, with a neat, feathered toque perched upon her head, and normally accompanied by her ‘lady companion’, a younger and rather pretty lady called Miss O’Neill. Like Robert Caldwell, Miss Robinson told Amanda substantially the same story that she would later tell the court. She said that her father had been the owner, in the 1850s, of a tobacco plantation in Richmond, Virginia. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, she was still a child. For her own safety, she left her homeland to come to England and stay with an aunt, arriving in August 1861. It was at this point in time that she began to keep a diary. While staying with her aunt in Tunbridge Wells, Miss Robinson had met Mr Druce as a guest at her aunt’s house. He had told
her, she recollected, that he lived in Nottingham, and kept tame foxes running about the woods on his estate.
About the middle of 1864, Miss Robinson told Amanda, she had returned to the United States. Here she had met the eminent author Charles Dickens, touring Boston in May 1868. Dickens, who according to Miss Robinson knew T. C. Druce, had suggested to her that she return to England, to act as Druce’s ‘outside correspondent’ – a form of assistant or secretary, it appeared. It was Charles Dickens, Miss Robinson claimed, who told her that T. C. Druce of the Baker Street Bazaar also lived at Welbeck Abbey and was, in reality, the 5th Duke of Portland. Acting on Dickens’ suggestion, Miss Robinson had taken lodgings near Welbeck Abbey, staying with a family called Pearce at a house called ‘Lady Hill’. Here, she had sent and received confidential letters on behalf of the duke – posting letters from him at the Post Office, and receiving letters intended for him at the Pearces’ home, under the pseudonym of ‘Madame Tussaud’. Much of the duke’s clandestine correspondence that she fielded appeared to be with a mysterious Dutchman, by the name of ‘Van Aish’. Throughout the time of her acquaintance with the duke, Miss Robinson declared, she had always addressed him as ‘Druce’. The last she had seen of him was in late 1879, just before he died.
The third – and most enigmatic – of the Druce witnesses was a solemn and mysterious old lady in her seventies, who always appeared veiled in black (she had, for this reason, been dubbed ‘the Veiled Lady’ by Herbert Druce’s lawyers, Freshfields). Mrs Margaret Jane Louisa Hamilton was quiet, well educated and had very good manners. It was she who had persuaded Sir Francis Jeune, president of the probate division, to grant preliminary ‘letters of request’ to Anna Maria Druce for the opening of the Druce vault back in 1898; and for many, it was her non-appearance at the subsequent trial of the matter before Mr Justice Barnes, that had been the principal reason for Anna Maria’s dismal failure at that hearing.
Mrs Hamilton told Amanda that she had been born in Rome and was the daughter of Robert Lennox Stuart, an aristo-cratic and bohemian gentleman. Stuart had been a cousin and close friend of the 5th Duke, and his go-between in some of his amorous liaisons. Indeed, the duke had been her godparent. Her father, she said, had taken her more than once to Welbeck Abbey, where she became a favourite of the duke (then Marquess of Titchfield), and learned from him that he was also T. C. Druce of Baker Street. After that, she had seen the duke in disguise as T. C. Druce at the Baker Street Bazaar, and had been told by her father of the duke’s intention to destroy his alter ago by the pretended death of Druce, a mock funeral, and the burial of an empty coffin. She had recognized Druce at the bazaar from a photograph her father had given her of him, when she first came to London as a young girl, about the year 1844.
Mrs Hamilton recalled a number of vivid instances of clashes between T. C. Druce and his second wife Annie May, as a result of his double life. On one occasion, for example, Annie May had been audacious enough to embroider a ducal coronet on the corners of her handkerchiefs. This act had enraged the duke/Druce, who promptly snipped off the corners and threw them in the fire. She also remembered the many shadowy lady friends of T. C. Druce, including a mysterious Frenchwoman by the name of ‘Madame Eloise’, the object of a number of secret assignations.
Such, in essence, was the heart of the case that T. C. Druce was the 5th Duke of Portland. It now remained only for George Hollamby and Thomas Coburn to decide how they were to frame their claim. This was a subject of lively debate in company committee meetings. The position was complicated by the fact that the 4th Duke of Portland had taken care to protect the position of his daughters, so often left penniless under the traditional rules of primogeniture. Under the terms of the 4th Duke’s will, the English provincial estates of the family (including Welbeck Abbey) followed the title, and were limited to the male heir. These estates therefore devolved, on the death of the 5th Duke without an apparent male heir, on his distant cousin William, who became the 6th Duke. However, a hugely valuable portion of the 4th Duke’s properties – the London estate, which included vast swathes of Marylebone – was settled on the 4th Duke’s issue, his four daughters succeeding (to equal quarter shares) in default of male heirs. Thus when the 5th Duke died, ostensibly unmarried, the Marylebone estates devolved on to his four sisters. The eldest sister, Lady Harriet, was unmarried; the next, Lady Ossington, was married but childless; the youngest was unmarried and predeceased the 5th Duke. The third sister was Lady Lucy, who in 1828 had married Charles Ellis, the 6th Baron Howard de Walden. It was her heirs, therefore, who inherited the priceless parcel of a large part of north-central London.
The Druce claimants thus had two potential estates they could choose to pursue: the Welbeck estate, then owned by William, the 6th Duke of Portland, or the Marylebone estate, at that point owned by Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden, the descendant of Lady Lucy. After much discussion, it was decided by the company committee that the claim would be brought against Lord Howard de Walden. A further action could be commenced against the 6th Duke of Portland and the Welbeck estate at a future date, if the first were successful.
A claim against the vast resources of the de Walden estates was embarked upon, but it soon became clear that to carry such a claim through to conclusion would be a lengthy and expensive process. Something more manageable was required. A softer target was therefore decided upon: a private prosecution for perjury would be brought against T. C. Druce’s son Herbert Druce, who had testified during the course of the proceedings commenced by Anna Maria Druce, almost a decade ago, that his father T. C. Druce had died and was buried in December 1864. If T. C. Druce had indeed been the Duke of Portland in disguise, then Herbert must have lied. And winning the case against Herbert would be a major step towards victory, the real prize that beckoned with tantalizing elusiveness: the Marylebone estates, Welbeck Abbey and, ultimately, the Portland dukedom.
Yet again, therefore, clerks scurried to the Inns of Court with briefs for leading counsel; advertisements for witnesses were placed in newspapers around the world; proofs of evidence were prepared; witnesses gathered. The Druce case was once more ready for the road.
*1 G. H. Druce, Ltd, was incorporated with a capital of £11,000, divided into 10,000 shares of £1 each and 20,000 shares of one shilling, all held by George Hollamby himself except for statutory nominees. He soon began to sell the shares to raise funds, and by 1907 had sold over 10,000.
*2 Although she did not know it when she took on the job as secretary for G. H. Druce, Ltd, Amanda was to find fame (and notoriety) in the future as the spiritual healer, writer, guru and self-publicist extraordinaire, Sister Veni Cooper-Mathieson. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she was to set up a number of churches in Australia along Christian Science lines. She was also to publish numerous books on positive thinking that were, in essence, early predecessors to the modern self-help manual. Her 1906 ‘metaphysical novel’, A Marriage of Souls, was finally published in Perth in 1914, and is believed to be the first novel published in Western Australia.
*3 Worth over £50 million in today’s money.
*4 Characteristics of the condition include prominent pores and a fibrous thickening of the nose, commonly associated with the skin complaint known as rosacea.
He who states his case first sounds right, until the other comes and examines him.
The Holy Bible, Proverbs, 18:17
(Revised Standard Version)
Marylebone Police Court, 2 Seymour Place, W1, was an imposing, two-storey Italianate building in white brick and Portland stone. On most days, it was surrounded by a rabble of vagabonds and pickpockets, plus the odd policeman on the beat. But this day – Friday, 25 October 1907 – was different. True, the courtroom was besieged as usual, but not by the usual crowd. For on this damp, wet and dreary morning of an exceptionally wet and dreary month, an impressive queue of smart carriages jostled for space in front of the courtroom doors, disgorging onto the muddy thoroughfare an array of fine gentlemen and fas
hionable ladies.
Those lucky enough to push their way through the clam-our-ing crowd, past the narrow scrutiny of the burly policemen stationed at the court entrance, and into the crowded courtroom, would have discovered an even more unusual spectacle. This was the surreal sight of the Marylebone police magistrate, the bespectacled and grey-haired Alfred Chichele Plowden, surrounded by a cluster of titled females, the delicate scent of rose water that wafted from their collective presence mingling with the more familiar police court odour of old rags, tobacco, stale beer, sawdust, turpentine and cheese. Not that Mr Plowden objected to these charming invaders of his court. Throughout his life, he had been very susceptible to the charms of women. As he frequently said himself, the passages in his life which he most loved to recall were those in which the ‘blue or black eyes of some goddess or other had played a leading part’.
Alfred Chichele Plowden was, perhaps, typical of a police magistrate of his day. He had been born in Meerut, India, and sent to school in England for the Spartan form of schooling then considered obligatory for his class, at the hands of a cane-wielding vicar. An education at Westminster and Oxford had followed, after which he had trained for the Bar. He was descended from the illustrious Sir Edmund Plowden of Plowden Hall: the great Tudor lawyer and advisor to Elizabeth I, whose legacy survives to this day in the splendid architecture of Middle Temple Hall. But Alfred Chichele Plowden would be the first to concede that he had not matched the high achievements of his famous ancestor. After a desultory career as a barrister on the Oxford circuit and part-time law reporter for The Times, he had narrowly lost the opportunity of a judicial appointment – by just three votes, he was at pains to point out – and had been obliged to settle for the much less prestigious post of a magistrate within the seedy confines of Marylebone Police Court. He often complained that it was like ‘playing Hamlet in a barn’. ‘Anything less like a Temple of Justice’, he would lament, ‘can hardly be imagined. Marylebone compares favourably with some of the police courts in London, but with its sickly blue tiles running round the walls and its hideous wooden fittings, a stranger entering for the first time might feel puzzled to say whether he was in a lavatory or a conventicle.’
The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse Page 13
