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**TradeName** · 12-02-2011, 03:33 AM

More O'Brien

New York Times, February 17, 1889, link

RICHARD PIGOTT'S STORY

THE RECENT LIGHT ON IT AND MORE TO COME

In 1890 Newcombe repeats his story of being introduced to O'Brien by Inspector Frederick Jarvis.

New York Times, October 10, 1890, link

DAVITT'S CHARGES DENIED

MESSRS. HOARE, GAYLOR, AND NEWCOMBE TALK OF THEM

Summary of Davitt's article with some responses:

Aurora Daily Express, October 10, 1890, Page 2

Davitt's Blast

His Latest Bombardment of the British Tories

--

Every Charge Repudiated

Billy Pinkerton Says There is No Truth in It--Hoar and Vancott

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A Crusher from Vancott

--

Consul Hoare's Comments

**TradeName** · 12-02-2011, 03:39 AM

Accessories

Along with that other fellow, dynamiters were popularly imagined to tote a Gladstone bag.

Punch, Volumes 92-93, August 27, 1887, Page 94

THE "ARTIST'S HOLIDAY;
Or, A Brush With The Police.

[...]

Southampton.�Go on board boat for Ryde. Curious. Three men following me about everywhere! On stepping on to Ryde pier, they make a pounce on me. Ask to see my luggage. It seems they are "subaltern administrators of the law," disguised. I refuse to give up my keys; in order to mollify them, make a joke, and tell them "they can't Ryde the high horse here." Only reply they make is to break my bag open. Very objectionable. Crowd evidently think I'm a London thief, and hoot at me.

Ask Detectives if they think I look like a Dynamiter? They say nothing, and wink. Seem to look on my question as a "leading," or rather a misleading, one. Thank Heaven! There's nothing suspicious in my Gladstone bag. But, as these are Government emissaries, perhaps the mere possession of a "Gladstone" bag is considered to connect me in some mysterious way with Parnellism, and so with crime. Is there such a thing as a Salisbury" bag? Wish I'd got one if there is. Perhaps it would be a good move to tell them I'm a Unionist. They reply (gruffly) "they don't want none of my gab," and that they intend to find out what I am precious quick.

At Police Station.�(To which I've been taken through a howling mob!) Bag opened. Several things appear to excite suspicion. Palette inspected carefully. If it hadn't been for bad success of my last humorous remark, should tell my captors that "I've no palate for conspiracy." My box of brushes regarded as highly questionable. Suggests obvious sporting-riddle�Why do they think I've been in at the death (of somebody or other ?)�Answer: because I've got the brush! Bottle of Chinese White at once impounded. Considered to contain " an explosive composition," it seems. Detectives convey it carefully to middle of large field, and bury it, until Colonel Majendie can come down from Town. What, however, is regarded as greatest proof of my nefarious tendencies is a picture of London Bridge in my portfolio. Detective asks triumphantly�" What made you draw that there bridge if you ain't a Fenian, now?" I reply it's only a pot-boiler." Answer considered so very incriminating that I am immediately handcuffed and put in a cell. Never realised before what a very "fanciful and captious mistress," Art is, or what idiots "the subaltern administrators of the law" are capable of making of themselves.

Three Days Later.�Liberated! Am told it was "all a mistake." Chinese White bottle proved not to contain anything dangerous to human life. Pot-boiler restored me, slightly soiled. No excuses or apologies made�sent away with a "free pardon!" And this is England! Ah, they manage some things better in France!

**lynn cates** · 12-02-2011, 06:20 AM

Wilson

Hello Trade. Was not Wilson one of the names from the SB ledgers? O'Brien was.

Cheers.
LC

**lynn cates** · 12-02-2011, 06:25 AM

Hoares

Hello (again) Trade. Interesting article. I found several Hoares in the Primrose League. Know much about them?

Cheers.
LC

**TradeName** · 12-02-2011, 06:22 PM

LC,

I'm not up on Hoares.

**lynn cates** · 12-02-2011, 07:12 PM

help with Hoares

Hello Trade. Thanks anyway. Perhaps someone else knows about the Hoares?

Cheers.
LC

**lynn cates** · 12-03-2011, 01:41 AM

relieve tedium here

Hello All. Boredom a problem? Here are a list of some people, friends of WHH, and present at his wedding. Research?

1.Earl of Rosebery

2. JC Bancroft Davis

3. William Wetmore Story

4. George Augustus Sala

Happy hunting.

Cheers.
LC

**sleekviper** · 12-03-2011, 02:35 AM

Davis is a familiar one, he was key in relations with England for America. The treaty where England paid millions to America post Civil War involved him. He presented the case for America in Geneva I think.

**lynn cates** · 12-03-2011, 03:16 AM

double life

Hello Joe. Thanks for that. Sometimes it is easy to forget about the life he led before emigration.

Cheers.
LC

**TradeName** · 12-03-2011, 03:22 AM

Sala speaks of Hurlbert in his memoir and of witnessing Pigott's confession to Labouchere:

The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala (London: Cassell, 1895), Volume 2, Pages 53-54
by George Augustus Sala

The other intimate friend of mine, whom I first knew in 1864, was William Henry Hurlburt. At the time of which I speak he was a leader-writer in the New York World, of which the editor was Mr. Manton Marble. I have rarely known a man so varied in accomplishments as Hurlburt. He was one of the most brilliant conversationalists I ever listened to; and he could judge things from an English as well as from an American standpoint. A scholar, a linguist, a traveller, a brilliant writer, a fluent public speaker, with a singularly melodious, yet forcible voice. All the fairies, save one, seemed to have been present at his christening. Many years after we became friends, an American lady in Rome told me that Hurlburt, early in his career, had been an Unitarian minister; and that he won the admiration of the female part of his congregation, not only by his eloquence as a preacher, but also through the circumstance that he was accustomed to ascend the pulpit stairs "with a true polka step."

The friendship which I conceived for William Henry Hurlburt remains undiminished to this day. I am not one of those who desert old friends when they are under a cloud. He was defendant in an action for breach of promise of marriage, and the jury returned a verdict in his favour; but there were some mysterious features in the case which have never been, and probably never will be, cleared up; and I am wholly at a loss to understand the acharnement with which Hurlburt has been pursued. I was subpoenaed as a witness, to testify as to his handwriting in certain letters which were submitted to me; but I told the plaintiff's counsel, Mr. Candy, Q.C., that I could not possibly swear that the calligraphy of this correspondence was Hurlburt's: inasmuch as I had not received a letter from him for full twenty years; that I had to read, every year, thousands of communications from all sorts of people from all parts of the world; and, finally, that I was more than half blind. So the learned counsel affably told me to begone.

Pages 431-436

I may, before winding up, say something about one of the last public transactions in which I have been concerned. In February, 1889, I was the occupant of a Hat in Victoria Street, Westminster, and one Saturday, between one and two p.m., a knock came at my studydoor; and I was handed a letter which had been brought in hot haste by a servant who was instructed to Avait for an answer. The missive was of the briefest possible kind, and was from my near neighbour Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P., whose house was then at 24, Grosvenor Gardens. The note ran thus: "Can you leave everything, and come here at once? Most important business.�H. L." I told the servant that I would be in Grosvenor Gardens within a quarter of an hour, and, ere that time had expired, I was ushered into a large library on the ground floor, where I found the Senior Member for Northampton smoking his sempiternal cigarette, but with an unusual and curious expression of animation in his normally impassible countenance.

He was not alone. Ensconced in a roomy fauteuil a few paces from Mr. Labouchere's writing-table there was a somewhat burly individual of middle stature and of more than middle age. He looked fully sixty; although I have been given to understand that his age did not exceed fifty-five; but his elderly aspect was enhanced by his baldness, which revealed a large amount of oval os frontis fringed by grey locks. The individual had an eye-glass screwed into one eye, and he was using this optical aid most assiduously; for he was poring over a copy of that morning's issue of the Times, going right down one column and apparently up it again; then taking column after column in succession; then harking back as though he had omitted some choice paragraph; and then resuming the sequence of his lecture, ever and anon tapping that ovoid frontal bone of his, as though to evoke memories of the past, with a little silver pencilcase. I noted his somewhat shabby-genteel attire; and in particular I observed that the hand which held the copy of the Times never ceased to shake. Mr. Labouchere, in his most courteous manner and his blandest tone, said, "Allow me to introduce you to a gentleman of whom you must have heard a great deal, Mr. ."

I replied, "There is not the slightest necessity for naming him. I know him well enough. That's Mr. Pigott."

The individual in the capacious fauteuil wriggled from behind the Times an uneasy acknowledgment of my recognition; but, if anything could be conducive to putting completely at his ease a gentleman who, from some cause or another, was troubled in his mind, it would have been the dulcet voice in which Mr. Labouchere continued: "The fact is that Mr. Pigott has come here, quite unsolicited, to make a full confession. I told him that I would listen to nothing that he had to say save in the presence of a witness; and remembering that you lived close by, I thought that you would not mind coming here and listening to what Mr. Pigott has to confess, which will be taken down, word by word, from his dictation, in writing." It has been my lot, during a long and diversified career, to have to listen to a large number of very queer statements from very queer people; and, by dint of experience, you reach at last a stage of stoicism when little, if anything, that is imparted to you excites surprise. Mr. Pigott, although he had screwed his courage to the sticking-place of saying that he was going to confess, manifested considerable tardiness in orally "owning up." Conscience, we were justified in assuming, had "gnawed" to an extent sufficient to make him disposed to relieve his soul from a dreadful burden; but conscience, to all seeming, had to gnaw a little longer and a little more sharply ere he absolutely gave tongue. So we let him be for about ten minutes. c c

Mr. Labouchere kindled another cigarette. I lighted a cigar.

At length Mr. Pigott stood up and came forward into the light, by the side of Mr. Labouchere's writingtable. He did not change colour; he did not blench; but when�out of the fulness of his heart, no doubt� his mouth spake, it was in a low, half-musing tone, more at first as though he were talking to himself than to any auditors. By degrees, however, his voice rose, his diction became more fluent. It is only necessary that in this place I should say that in substance Pigott confessed that he had forged the letters alleged to have been written by Mr. Parnell ; and he minutely described the manner in which he, and he alone, had executed the forgeries in question. Whether the man with the bald head and the eye-glass in the library at Grosvenor Gardens was telling the truth or uttering another batch of infernal lies it is not for me to determine. No pressure was put upon him; no leading questions were asked him; and he went on quietly and continuously to the end of a story which I should have thought amazing had I not had occasion to hear many more tales even more astounding. He was not voluble, but he was collected, clear, and coherent; nor, although he repeatedly confessed to forgery, fraud, deception, and misrepresentation, did he seem overcome with anything approaching active shame. His little peccadilloes were plainly owned, but he appeared to treat them more as incidental weaknesses than as extraordinary acts of wickedness.

When he had come to the end of his statement, Mr. Labouchere left the library for a few minutes to obtain a little refreshment. It was a great relief to me that Pigott did not disclose anything to me when we were left together. There came over me a vague dread that he might disclose his complicity with the Rye House Plot, or that he would admit that he had been the executioner of King Charles I. The situation was rather embarrassing; the time might have been tided over by whistling, but unfortunately I never learnt to whistle. It would have been rude to read a book; and, besides, to do so would have necessitated my taking my eyes off Mr. Pigott, and I never took them off him. We did get into conversation, but our talk was curt and trite. He remarked, first taking up that so-often-conned Times, that the London papers were inconveniently large. This, being a self-evident proposition, met with no response from me; but on his proceeding to say, in quite a friendly manner, that I must have found the afternoon's interview rather stupid work, I replied that, on the contrary, so far as I was concerned, I had found it equally amusing and instructive. Then, the frugal Mr. Labouchere coming back with his mouth full, we went to business again. The whole of Pigott's confession, beginning with the declaration that he had made it uninvited and without any pecuniary consideration, was read over to him line by line and word by word. He made no correction or alteration whatsoever. The confession covered several sheets of paper, and to each sheet he affixed his initials. Finally, at the bottom of the completed document he signed his name, beneath which I wrote my name as a witness.