Crime & Punishment

Crime & Punishment

Honest Duchess. The Lords of Appeal, topped by puffy Lord Chief Justice of England Baron Hewart, last week saved from languishing in jail 3% of Britain's dukes--i. e. one,. His Grace the Duke of Manchester, spendthrift extraordinary and bankrupt plenipotentiary.

Manchester once owed $5,000 for tennis balls alone, probably a record. "Going bankrupt isn't so bad as it sounds," he has said, adding reminiscently, "I remember my first bankruptcy. I was only 16 and went broke for a couple of thousand pounds [$10,000]. My trouble is that I have always been a mug--too trustful and willing to help others."

In grim old Bailey Court month ago Manchester was sentenced to nine months in jail for the "fraud" of pawning jewels tied up beyond his reach in the family estate by his late shrewd mother. Her wisdom has permitted Manchester time & again to spend all he can get his hands on and more, go bankrupt, and then start afresh on the next instalment handed him by trustees who have absolute discretion.

The Old Bailey conviction and jail sentence looked ironclad to laymen, for His Grace had signed assurances to the pawnbrokers that he possessed the jewels pawned, which he did not possess. Was that not fraud? Last week when Manchester's case reached the Court of Criminal Appeal, it was loftily held by Their Lordships that there had been no "intent to defraud" and therefore no fraud by Manchester because His Grace had been advised by lawyers that he did possess the jewels. In quashing the jail sentence, England's Lord Chief Justice said that the Duke of Manchester "seemed to have acted in good faith."

After a merry lifetime of beating creditors, an aristocratic sport condoned by his rich first wife from the U. S., Manchester had the temperamental misfortune to marry a poor but honest English actress, one Miss Kathleen Dawes.

Mourned His Grace recently: "I had not a care in the world before my second marriage but my position is different now. I am married to a woman who has never owed a penny in her life. She does not understand how one comes to incur debts. I am worried because the Duchess is worried. Otherwise, I would not have a single care in the world." In sombre mood last week His Grace was led out of Wormwood Scrubs Prison, promptly had himself declared bankrupt once more and vanished from London, his lawyers announcing, "The Duke of Manchester is resting in the country."

Cocaine Sandwiches. Next to the Duke of Manchester's acquittal, nothing so revealed the quality of British Justice, poetic and otherwise, last week as the windup of Bournemouth's famed "Mallet Murder" (TIME, April 22). When police burst into the home of Sentimental Lyric Writer Mrs. Alma Victoria Rattenbury, 38, who called her rich and aged husband by the pet name "Rats," they found him dying, found on the wooden mallet that killed him fingerprints of callow, adoring Chauffeur George Percy Stoner, 18.

"I did it!" cried Mrs. Rattenbury. " 'Rats' had lived too long! No, my lover did it. 'Rats' said I hadn't the guts to kill him!"

Chauffeur Stoner, it came out at the trial, had been fortified with sandwiches containing cocaine and Mrs. Rattenbury explicitly confessed herself his mistress. This state of affairs so disturbed Mr. Justice Humphreys that it took him 3 1/2 hours to charge the jury in Old Bailey. He told them with evident regret that pity for the drugged and passion-crazed chauffeur could not extenuate the crime of murder, nor could repugnance for "Rats'" wife count properly against her at this trial.

"Beware," cried His Lordship, "that you do not convict her of this crime [murder] because she is an adulteress--an adulteress of, you may think, the most unpleasant type."

The jury, after 53 minutes, dutifully found Adulteress Rattenbury innocent and Dupe Stoner guilty last week of the murder of "Rats," she being promptly set free and he sentenced to hang. "I am glad she has been spared!" cried Murderer Stoner.

Few days later near Bournemouth one William Mitchell, a herdsman, was walking by a lily pond near the late "Rats" house. He saw Mrs. Rattenbury advance slowly into the pond, a dagger in her right hand. "Hi, stop!" cried Herdsman Mitchell but the Sentimental Lyric Writer stabbed herself six times in the breast, finally pierced her heart and slipped with a gush of blood among the lilies.

Spilsbury Sniff. Never a crime of "Spilsbury calibre" was the "Rats" murder but last week Britain's real-life Sherlock Holmes, the great criminal pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury (TIME, March 4 et seq.), was called on a case exactly to his taste when the potman of a pub in South London went nosing down into a cellar disused for years. Next door to the pub is the Old Surrey Theatre, now being torn down but in Queen Victoria's day the mecca of thrill-thirsty folk who loved to see dramas of ripe, purple blood and thunder.

The potman last week found in the pub cellar the sort of thing that used to occur on the nearby stage half a century ago. Some villain had struck down a middleaged, grey-haired man, rolled him up in curtains, then in linoleum, finally in carpets and tied the big bundle with a rope. When Sir Bernard Spilsbury arrived the usual London headlines suggested that not even this murder trail could be too cold for his keen, Sherlocking nose. Sniffed he: "I should say this man was killed about 1885 and was at that time about 55 years old. There are certain peculiar marks where the skull was indented by a blow which may prove significant."

Blaze of Praise. Though British faith in the peerlessness of Scotland Yard never wavers, every retiring Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police resigns in a blaze of praise from London editors who always say how efficiently he has cleaned up the Yard and stamped out graft. Only four years ago this job was completed by Field Marshal Viscount Byng of Vimy who has just died (see p. 58). Last week the same job was triumphantly finished again by trumpet-voiced Lord "Boom" Trenchard who announced his resignation as Commissioner amid the usual plaudits. Next man to spruce up spruce Scotland Yard and make the "Old Incorruptibles" still more so will be Sir Philip Game, onetime Governor of New South Wales, appointed last week to become Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police next November. Truth of the Scotland Yard matter is that the office of Commissioner is a juicy prestige plum passed by His Majesty's Government every few years to some deserving oldster who seldom does more than bumble and boom. Laborites accuse Lord "Boom" Trenchard of having "Fascistized" the London Police. Last week the London Times, owl-solemn, praised him for "an achievement of its kind with few parallels," alluding to the new police college at Hendon, new police sports grounds, demolition by "Boom" of a few archaic police barracks.

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