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2nd February 1918

The Waterford Peerage

The gardener named Tooth, who claimed the Waterford peerage has lost his case, and he cannot have the satisfaction of knowing that the result leaves the slightest doubt in the mind of any reasonable person. It is hard to believe how he found anyone to support his impudent pretensions. No feebler attempt to obtain a title and estates has every been recorded. In the famous TICHBORNE case the claimant was able to adduce evidence which called seriously for rebuttal, and it required a considerable effort - the trail lasted 103 days - to expose the impostor. Tooth's case was clumsy, variable and tenuous. It never had in it the romantic allegations which marked the effort of an organ grinder to obtain the Poulett earldom in 1903,or the claim to the Sackville barony in 1910. It needed no reply, and none would have been given but for the wise desire of the Waterford family to allay once and for all the foolish gossip to which TOOTH and a female busybody who encouraged him had given currency.

The story contained many of the customary ingredients in such litigation - a kidnapped infant. It is more easily followed from the respondents case. Mrs. Vivian eloped with a fifth MARQUESS OF WATERFORD, and was married to him. In March 1873, newspapers contain an announcement that LADY WATERFORD had given birth to a still-born child. Three days later the mother died. The child's body had been buried at Brompton, but it was exhumed and re-interred with the body of LADY WATERFORD at Curraghmore.

Early in 1872 LADY WATERFORD had spent a few weeks in a convent. While she was there she heard from her companion that her cooks sister had given birth to a child in a workhouse, and that the mother had been deserted and had died. LADY WATERFORD, touched by compassion, took the child out of the workhouse and entrusted it to a women, who received payment for its support, first, from LADY WATERFORD, and, AFTER her death, from her husband. The claimant said that this story was mainly a figment. He alleged that LADY WATERFORD'S child was not still born, but was living and was spirited away in pursuance of a conspiracy. He contended that he was that child. Then, lest his charge that there had been a spurious funeral might be disproved, he boldly suggested that LADY WATERFORD had given birth to twins, of whom one was born dead and the other alive. No effort was made to show with what motive a young peer, whose dearest hope must have been to have an heir, should have banished and consigned to poverty and obscurity the baby son of a women whom he had loved with an ardour which outran discretion.

The truth, according to the evidence, is that TOOTH's association with the Beresford family had been purely eleemosynary. His action affords one of those examples of ingratitude which, happily, do not permanently emitter the hearts of those who have the wealth and poser to help the poor and unfortunate. Yet if ingratitude is the only charge that can be made against the claimant, he had left the Court well favoured.

News of the World March 3rd 1915