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VOLUME I.
SOUNDS MORE LIKE
FICTION, THIS
REAL LIFE
STORY
PLOT MARRED BY CUPID
How Highly Placed Business Man
Was Caught in a Marriage
Trap—Horace Field Parshall,
the “Shrewdest American in
London,” Was Victimized and
Unwittingly Wed Another’Man’s
Wife.
iW ONDON—A romance inspired on
M one side —the woman’s —by a
■ trickster's criminal cunning, in
iJL4 w Mch sentimental mockery at
the start takes the place of love
and by degrees becomes a worthy emo
tion; in which an unlawful marriage,
planned with calculating sordidness,
once entered into becomes a real af
fairs of the heart; in which a wife
acting the leading role in her hus
band's dastardly plot becomes a big
amist and then, the true woman with
in her asserting itself, becomes crush
ed by the irreconcilable falsity of
her position and confesses. A real sit
uation? Yes.
In this strange way are the inci
dents worked out in the trapping at
the altar of Horace Field Parshall,
chairman of the Central London rail
way and known as the shrew’dest
American in London, relates the New
York World. Sent forth under threats
of death to do the criminal bidding of
a man to whom she had linked herself
In girlhood, the impulse of love for
him who becomes her victim at the
end makes the woman’s part in the
plot little short of a soul tragedy.
As for the man—for Parshall —it is
the story of an honorable dupe who,
when the truth is made known to him,
is compassionate instead of relentless,
and pleads for mercy while others call
for punishment.
Parshall High in Business World.
With an income cf considerably
more than a hundred thousand dollars
a year, and dukes and lords and oth
er British money men as his business
> associates, Horace Field Parshall Is
well known in London. He is forty
six years old and a widower with two
children, a boy and a girl. His wife
was a Miss Rutty. He came from Mil
ford, N. Y., and entered railroading in
London during the days of Charles T.
Yerkes, being an engineer who com
mands money by his genius.
The woman —the real victim if one
measures consequences—is Mrs. De
borah Jeffreys, wife of one Herbert
Harrington Jeffreys, whose name sug
gests respectability but whose record
does not. She is thirty-three years
old, comely, of gentle manners, and
her life well ordered except in so far
as it has been warped by her husband.
The first setting of this strange
story is at an English summer resort;
the last, with final curtain, in a Lon
don police court.
In January a year ago Mr. Parshall
was introduced to a young woman
known then by the name of Miss
Bertha Johnson. She seemed a person
of refinement. She was well gowned
and of charming manner. Mr. Par
shall met her not infrequently there
after, and one day asked her to marry
him.
Seemingly Happy Marriage.
On August 5 they were married.
Parshall, unsuspecting and happy,
iformed a little party at The Piers,
and with his bride at his side, motor
ed to the sleepy littlo hamlet of El
ham. lying midway between Folke
stone and the famous cathedral town
of Canterbury, where, at the registry
office, the ceremony was performed.
Mrs. Martha Judd of Folkestone was
one of those present at the mar
riage.
Many a plan of the mind has before
now been upset by the heart of a wom
an. It was so in this case. The false
.wife found herself the center of con
flicting emotions. At the instigation
of a man who would willingly sacrl
j flee her for his own financial benefit
I she had married a man whose tender
i iness and kindness had made her truly
| happy. But the relation was impos
* aible.
At the Parshall country place in the
suburbs of London she met the chil
dren. They, too. became fond of her,
loved her, and so with each passing
day the struggle went on within her
until, unable longer to bear the strain
of her own duplicity, she planned to
escape It by the o-^e means which
women who halt at suicide adopt—she
confessed. *
Mr. Parshall's business had taken
him away from home. Conscience-
NUMBER 14.
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Horace Parshall
stricken, she wrote to him, telling of i
the wrong she had done him and, ;
while admitting his own weakness
and the part she had played, placed i
the larger blame on the man who had j
forced her into it
Blight on Parshall's Life.
The only course open to Parshall,
having an honorable position to main
tain, was to seek a prompt annulment
of the marriage. This the high court
granted on the statement oi the
facts.
It left Parshall free, but with a
cynical view of life. It left the wom
an a heart-torn wreck. By her own
admission she could not sleep and was
so convinced of the necessity of ac
cepting punishment for her wrong
doing that she made her way to Bow
street police station and told her
story in detail, knowing full well what
it meant to her.
First she told of her marriage to
Herbert Harrington Jeffreys, a cos
ter type, ranging always on the fringe
of the underworld, with a constitution
al objection to work and a fixed de
sire for tawdry finery. Then she told
of her meeting with Parshall, the great
railroad man, “the shredwest Ameri
can in all London" in matters of busi
ness, but otherwise like mankind in
general.
The calculating Jeffreys, knowing
well the position occupied by Parshall
in the London transit world and of
his very considerable income, there
upon, according to the wife’s frankly
told confession, urged her at firstand
afterward by threat made her pose
as a widow in the hope and belief that
by this means she might secure money
from Parshall.
Husband Threatens to Kill.
But Parshall, with honorable intent,
fell in love with her, thus making the
situation complicated. This unlook
ed for turn in affairs did not make
Jeffreys halt. As the story was told
to Divisional Detective Inspector
Gough, the husband, reaching out for
a fixed and permanent Income as a
result of his wife's debauchery, sent
her forth to lure Parshall into mar
riage, holding over her a threat that If
she failed In the undertaking ho would
kill her.
Parshall had proposed. She accept
ed him. The marriage followed.
Venerable Sir Albert De Rutzen,
chief magistrate of the metropolitan
police court for more than ten years,
heard the case when it passed for
court jurisdiction. Sir Albert is keen
and kindly but not an emotionalist.
It is fifty-odd years since he was
graduated from Cambridge. He knows
the world. He knows its people, he
heard as much of the story here told
as falls within the questioning and an-
©he MldiM
IRWINTON, WILKINSON COUNTY, GEORGIA, FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1912.
I swers of a seif-acccused woman. Ho
stroked his wig now and then and
I more than once peered over his spec
i taeles at the woman in the dock.
No Plea for Mercy.
“And what have you to say for your
self?” he asked, with kindness in his
tone.
With no tearful byplay, but looking
the dignified chief magistrate straight
in the eye, in all seriousness she an
swered:
“I am deeply, deeply sorry forwha’
I have done, and I would not have done
it if my husband had not made me.”
London magistrates do not overlook
wrongdoing, but now and then a man
like Sir Albert De Rutzen interprets
the law with the end in view of real
justice. He permitted the weman to
depart upon payment of $25, to appear
for trial before the central criminal
court at a later date.
The concluding scene in this case
was in historic Old Bailey, where sits
the London court of sessions. A bond
of $25 does not hold a person desiring
to avoid trial here any more than it
would in the United States. Still Mrs.
Jeffreys appeared.
The confession which she had vol
untarily made to the police authori
ties was read to her and she said It
was correct, adding only one thing,
that Jeffreys had at his direction been
introduced by her to Parshall as her
brother-in-law. Jeffreys’ plan was to
get Parshall’s money—only that.
Still loving Mrs. Jeffreys perhaps,
certainly pitying her, Mr. Parshall,
through his counsel, pleaded that she
be treated with mercy, even as the
record of her duplicity was being writ
into a court document.
Her Punishment Nominal.
The recorder expressed the court’s
admiration of Mr. Parshall’s magnan
imity and accepted the spirit as well
as the letter of the woman's frank con
fession that she had been forced by
her real husband, from whom she was
separated, to marry the rich Amer
ican.
But punishment was necessary to
complete the record. This was im
posed—one day's imprisonment, a sen
tence which was purely nominal. The
effect was that she walked forth free.
Hand clapping and other manifesta
tions of approval are rigidly forbid
den within the walls of a London court
room, but once outside, this woman
who bad been made to suffer through
the sordjdness of another, who had
borne the brunt of the wrongdoing,
and, moved by an Impulse which wom
en alone know, had confessed, there
being no other way by which she
could bare her heart, was followed
by pitying glances as with bowed head
she was lost in the throng.
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