The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse (40 page)

pp. 49–50
Particulars of clothes orders of duke from Messrs Batt & Co
. See interview with Mr Batt Jnr, son of the firm, in the
Daily Mail
, 26 August 1898. Several details given by Mr Batt – including the mysterious use of different initials on linen – are echoed by Lady Ottoline Morrell in her account of the 6th Duke’s discoveries during their early days at Welbeck.

p. 51
    
quite bald.
See statement of the duke’s coachman Thomas Keetley at NU Pl L1/2/7/99.

p. 51
    Wig-maker’s visit to Harcourt House
. See interview with former foreman of Truefitt & Co.,
Daily Express
, 22 and 26 June 1903. The description of the room honeycombed with wigs in pigeonholes at Harcourt House mirrors that of the description of a room at Welbeck Abbey given by Lady Ottoline Morrell and recounted in
Men, Women and Things
, op. cit.

pp. 51–2
Duke’s handling of newspapers and coins
. See interview with former servant of 5th Duke of Portland in the
Daily Express
, 1 July 1903. Several accounts of servants and tradesmen refer to the peculiarity of coins having to be washed before the duke would touch them (see, for example, the interview with the duke’s tailor, Mr Batt, in the
Daily Mail
, 26 August 1898, and also the proof of the valet William Kerridge at NU Pl L1/2/6/13).

p. 52
    letter boxes… As his own valet conceded.
See interview with duke’s former valet in
P. T. O
., 2 February 1907. William Day in his
Reminiscences of the Turf
(op. cit., p. 137) also remarks that, in later years, the duke would scarcely see anybody except a few of his old servants. The young Lady Ottoline had noticed the heavy brass letter boxes on the duke’s door.

p. 53
    
left Welbeck Abbey for the last time.
See proof of Thomas Hardwick at NU Pl L1/2/6/13.

SCENE FIVE

p. 54
    the best ‘rummy go’.
The
Daily Mail
, 25 August 1898.

p. 56
    
Great
Expectations
. For an enlightening discussion of the meaning of the word ‘gentleman’ in Charles Dickens’
Great Expectations
, see Rupert Christiansen, ‘What is a Gentleman?’
in
‘
Charles Dickens’
Great Expectations
:
a new interpretation for students’,
http://exec.typepad.com/greatexpectations
.

p. 57
    
Boucicault,
London Assurance. See Dion Boucicault,
London Assurance
, stage adaptation by Ronald Eyre, London: Methuen & Co., 1971, Act Five, Scene I.

p. 57
    Self-Help by Samuel Smiles.
See Samuel Smiles,
Self-Help
, 1859, Project Gutenberg ebook.

p. 60
    
letter… to the Home Office.
See NA X27066.

p. 61
    
Memorandum of Edwin Freshfield.
See Memorandum of Freshfields to the Home Office dated March 1899, NA BT 31/12141/95200.

pp. 61–2
As one contemporary newspaper.
See
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper
, 27 March, 1898.

p. 64
    private investigators
. The files of the private investigator concerned – J. G. Littlechild – are now part of the Portland (London) Collection at Nottingham University.

p. 64
    Duke and Herbert Druce collaboration
. The Portland (London) Collection includes extensive correspondence between Baileys, Shaw & Gillett (on behalf of the duke) and Freshfields (on behalf of Herbert Druce) and exchanges of evidence and information.

p. 65
    long vacation
. See the description of the long vacation in Charles Dickens’
Bleak House
, Chapter 19.

p. 66
    ghost of the unburied ducal tradesman
. The
Daily Mail
, 27 August 1898.

p. 66
    spiritualistic séance
.
The People
, 13 March 1898.

p. 66
    ‘the most interesting woman in England’
. The
Daily Mail
, 2 September 1898.

p. 66
    
Serial on The Double Duke
. The
Daily Mail
, 29 August 1898. The series,
The Double Duke
, penned by the pot-boiler author Houghton Townley, ran 5 September–15 October 1898.

p. 66
    ‘I myself was a Miss Butler’
. See interview in
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper
, 13 March 1898. Anna Maria’s story was contradicted by Mr Stoward in an interview with J. G. Littlechild (see note below).

p. 66
    daughter of a humble Irish paperhanger.
See the private-investigator reports of J. G. Littlechild for the duke’s solicitors, Baileys, Shaw & Gillett, interview with Mr Stoward (a partner and old acquaintance of T. C. Druce), NU PI LI/1/3/3. Anna Maria several times referred in newspaper reports to her birth in Ireland, and gave Ireland as her place of birth in the 1881 English census.

p. 67
    Caroline Graves.
See Lyn Pykett,
Wilkie Collins
, Oxford World’s Classics, ebook 2005.

p. 67
    new, cannier, more upwardly mobile type
. See Kathryn Hughes,
The Victorian Governess
, London: Hambledon, 2001, Chapter 3.

p. 67
    
Lady Elizabeth Eastlake.
From
Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, and the Governess’ Benevolent Institution, Quarterly Review
, 84 (December 1848), p. 176.

p. 69
    carriage and pair… Brighton
. Note of evidence of Anna Maria Druce in the consistory court proceedings, NU PI LI/1/1/5.

p. 69
    three children
. The 1871 census return shows Annie May at 43 Belsize Square with Florence, Walter and Bertha. Mr Stoward (see note below) refers to Walter being persuaded to leave Anna Maria and return to Belsize Park.

p. 70
    mystery about him… guarded her dead husband’s secrets
. Note of evidence of Anna Maria Druce in the consistory court proceedings, NU PI LI/1/1/5.

p. 70
    Staffordshire
. The 1876
Kelly’s Directory of Stafford
gives Walter Druce as living in Little Haywood. The 1880
Directory
gives him as living in Hopton Hall, Hopton. Both are in Staffordshire.

p. 70
    business failures.
The accountant and executor of T. C. Druce’s will, Alexander Young, mentioned in his evidence during the proceedings in the probate court that Walter Druce had lost his legacy in failed farming ventures (NU PI/d/2).

p. 70
    relations with old Mrs Druce
. See interview with Anna Maria Druce in
Society
, 3 December 1898.

p. 71
    the workhouse
. The records of the Examinations for Settlement of the Marylebone Workhouse record an entry for Anna Maria Druce being examined for eligibility for entry to the workhouse in February 1884 (LMA ST/M/BG/165/10). The Creed Register for 1884 records the entry in February of Anna Maria and her children Margaret (Marguerite), Sidney, Walter and Nina. Florence was presumably out at work as a house servant at this point (see later note). Anna Maria described her time in the Marylebone Workhouse in an interview with
Society
on 3 December, repeating this story in an interview with the
Modern Detective
(30 March 1898). Mr Stoward in his interview with J. G. Littlechild stated that she had been ‘living on the public’ since 1881 (NU PI LI/1/3/3).

p. 71
    arrival at the workhouse
. This routine treatment of new arrivals at the workhouse is described in many contemporary accounts, such as the writer Charles Shaw’s account of a temporary stay at the Wolstanton and Burslem Union Workhouse at Chell in 1842, in his autobiography
When I was a Child
(1903).

p. 71
    ‘workhouse stripe’.
The description of female inmates’ garb is given by the master of Marylebone Workhouse, George Douglas, in his 1892 Report on the Management of the Workhouse, presented to the Workhouse Visiting Committee of the Guardians of the Poor (London Metropolitan Archives).

p. 71
    silent rows… scarlet-lettered anger
. See contemporary photo-graphs of meals taken in Marylebone and other workhouses in Peter Higginbotham,
The Workhouse Encyclopaedia
, Stroud: The History Press, 2012; photograph of the new casual ward in the Marylebone Workhouse designed by Henry Saxon Snell in 1867, featured in
The Illustrated London News
.

pp. 71–2
Daily routine
. Based on the 1835 Poor Law Commissioners’ daily routine for able-bodied inmates.

p. 72
    gossip and whisper tales
. See Shaw, op. cit.

p. 72
    the rest of Walter’s family
. In the 1891 census, Florence is listed as a ‘general servant’ to a family in Willesden and Nina as an inmate of the Field Lane Industrial School for Girls in Church Row, Hampstead. According to the New South Wales Unassisted Passenger Lists, Sidney Druce arrived in Sydney, New South Wales, on 17 August 1895. According to the 1891 census return for Marylebone Rackham Infirmary, Walter Druce (aged fourteen) spent census night in April as a patient on the premises. He is described as a ‘sailor seas’.

p. 72
    died there in
1891
… buried in a pauper’s grave.
In her interview referring to her time spent in the Marylebone Workhouse with
Society
on 3 December 1898, Anna Maria stated that she had a son who ‘died there’ and was buried in a pauper’s grave. She repeated this story in an interview with the
Modern Detective
(30 March 1898). The Marylebone Workhouse Creed Register shows that a Walter Druce was admitted from the training ship
Exmouth
and discharged to the Rackham Street Infirmary on 4 March 1891 (LMA X095/913). There is an entry for a Walter Druce, aged fourteen, in the records of the Rackham Street Infirmary for the April 1891 census, showing he was still there at this point. The records of the London Borough of Kensington include the death certificate of one Walter Druce, aged fourteen, apprentice from the training ship
Exmouth
, who died on 13 June 1891 at the Marylebone Infirmary.

p. 72
    ‘That will be exhumation number two’.
Quoted in interview with Mrs Druce in the
Modern Detective
, 30 March 1898.

p. 73
    nine months’ unpaid rent.
Mr Stoward, in his interview with Baileys, Shaw & Gillett of January 1899, mentioned that he had met a Mr Marler in court, who had stated that his wife was keeping Mrs Druce at Tavistock Square, and that she had not paid rent in nine months (NU PI LI/1/3/3).

p. 73
    offers to settle the case
. Anna Maria stated on several occasions that she had received offers to settle the case, from both the duke’s and Herbert Druce’s representatives, exceeding £60,000. See, for example, interview in the
Modern Detective
, 30 March 1898.

SCENE SIX

p. 75
    the Man from the
Star
…
fog.
The December of 1898 was characterized by fog in London – see, for example, the
London Daily News
, 22 December 1898. The
Star
man’s visit to Mrs Druce’s offices which is recounted in this chapter is based on a real-life
Star
journalist’s visit, reported in the
Star
of 23 December 1898, and the incidents described are as reported in this account.

p. 76
    All around… were newspaper offices
. The description of Fleet Street is based on the account of Charles Peabody, one-time reporter on the
Morning Post
and editor of the
Yorkshire Post
, in
English Journalism and the Men Who Have Made It
(1882).

p. 77
    preferred thrills to politics
. See Karen Roggenkamp,
Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth Century Newspapers and Fiction
: Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2005; Dennis Griffiths,
Fleet Street: Five Hundred Years of the Press
: The British Library, 2006.

p. 80
    
Daily Mail
… loggerheads with the
News of the World. See the
Daily Mail
, 19 October 1898, and the
News of the World
, 23 October 1898.

pp. 80–1
  handwriting samples.
See the
Daily Mail
, 6 October 1898.

p. 81
    ‘one skilled in the science of the head’.
See the
Daily Mail
, 6 December 1898.

p. 84
    Marlow… John Sheridan
. Detective J. G. Littlechild, who was tailing Mrs Druce on behalf of the duke and Herbert Druce, followed her in the company of Marlow and Sheridan, and noted in a confidential report to his employers dated 10 August 1898 that Mrs Druce was ‘mixing herself up with a queer lot of City men, Marlow setting the type, but what good they will be to her is questionable’. He also noted the background in relation to Sheridan and the Dreyfus affair (NU PI LI/9/1/1). Since Mrs Druce was being permanently tailed by journalists as well, it is likely that these rumours were current in Fleet Street at the time.

SCENE SEVEN

p. 88
    Then, cheering crowds… the queen had ascended the daïs
. See contemporary newspaper reports of the opening of the new Law Courts on the Strand by Queen Victoria on 4 December 1882. Also
Uncle Jonathan, Walks in and Around London
, 1895 (3rd edn).