Lillah McCarthy

Lillah McCarthy's Threatening Correspondent

Edwardian Actresses attracted a great deal of public attention and the more popular among them could expect to receive many letters and packages sent to them by members of the general public. Some were complimentary, expressing appreciation of their efforts on stage or congratulating them on their talents and good looks. Some were self-serving, begging money or requesting an introduction to set the writer on the first step to their own imagined career on the stage. Some were instructive - misguided but otherwise well-intentioned attempts to critique their efforts or advise them how better to play a particular role. Each of the former were, at the very least, harmless. But occasionally there might arrive a communication of an altogether more sinister tone, even, on some rare occasions, life threatening!

On December 4th, 1912, Lillah McCarthy, who was then the manageress of the Savoy Theatre and the principal actress in "Twelfth Night" being produced there, received a letter which read as follows:

Miss McCarthy's manager wrote a reply to Mr. Collins accepting the offer. But a few days later Miss McCarthy received a letter of an altogether different tone.

The letter, which bore a Spanish postage stamp and a curious device in the shape of the letter 'T' on the envelope, was placed in the hands of the police. Maurice Dewing was a respected solicitor from Horsham who denied all responsibility for, or knowledge of, the threatening letter. He did, however, recognise the second name that was seemingly threatened in the letter, Percy Collins, as being the son of a client for whom he had executed a will - an unstable young man who had recently spent six months in the West Sussex Mental Hospital at Chichester.

Superintendant Golding and Sergeant Stenning of the Horsham constabulary then visited Collins at his home in Trafalgar Road, Horsham, where he lived with his widowed mother, his wife and their infant child. Collins, it transpired, did no work, his wife and mother supporting the family by running a laundry business. Finding his answers to their questions unsatisfactory, the police decided to place a watch on him.

On December 13th, Miss McCarthy received another letter:

On December 15th, Police-Constable Barnes, who had been set to keep watch on the suspect, observed him in the act of posting another letter and on this occasion detained him. Barnes had no powers to intercept the letter as it had already been posted, and instead he escorted Collins back to his residence to conduct a peremptory search for other written materials.

Miss McCarthy received no threatening letter the next day, but no less a personage than King George V., monarch of Great Britain, did. A letter received in the private secretary's office at Buckingham Palace that day read as follows:

The letter was signed in the names of Superintendant Golding and Sergeant Stenning.

This letter was then immediately forwarded to the Home Office who consulted the police. The letter was then linked to Collins who was taken before the Horsham magistrates and remanded in custody.

He was subsequently further accused of sending the menacing letters to Miss McCarthy and brought back before the magistrates to answer the second charge. At this hearing, on January 7th, 1913, Mrs. Granville Barker (Lillah McCarthy) was the first to give evidence. She said she received the first letter and authorised her manager to reply giving her permission for the dedication to her of a song. The second letter, bearing threats against her, she gave to her manager who referred it to the police. When asked whether she knew Percy Collins or Mr. Dewing, or had ever seen the defendant, she answered in the negative on each point.

The defendant was then asked whether he had any questions to put at which point he turned to Mrs. Barker and said "of course you beleive these lying canaille of the gutter which disgrace the King's uniform?"

Mr. Muir, prosecuting counsel, objected that it was not a proper question for the witness to answer. Collins then asked "Is there any reason why you should believe me guilty?". Mrs. Barker did not answer, whereupon he demanded "You do not suggest that I wrote the letters, do you?". Mr. Muir objected again saying that it was not for the witness to suggest anything. The chairman then dismissed Mrs. Barker from the witness box.

Solicitor Maurice Dewing, in whose name the first threatening letter had been signed was called to give evidence. He said that he only knew the prisdoner to the extent that he had acted under the will of the defendants father. He further said that he had neither written nor authorised the letters to Miss McCarthy that bore his name although he acknowledged that the signatures bore a close resemblance to his own and one appeared to be written on a half-sheet of his own note-paper - possibly cut from a letter he had written to the defendant's mother.

Dr Kidd, medical superintendant of the West Sussex Hospital gave evidence that the defendant, whilst resident there, had written a letter to mother in capital letters similar to the writing of the letter which had been sent to the king.

Police-Sergeant Stenning, implicated in the King's letter, also gave evidence. He was asked by Mr. Muir who would have received the money had it been sent to the address given in the letter. P.S. Stenning replied he did not know as he did not live at the Bishopric. "But", said Mr. Muir, "you are well known enough. If the money had been sent it would have reached you?" The witness agreed but added, regretfully, that he had received no money.

On conclusion of the evidence, the defendant was asked if he wished to make a statement why he should not be committed for trial. He replied that he most emphatically desired to do so.

The Chairman interrupted him at that point saying "I should not say any more if I were you. You are only making your case worse by talking about it." Collins replied "As you like it! I don't mind."

The Bench then committed Collins to the February sessions at the Old Bailey for trial under three charges of offences against section 44 of the Larceny Act. At the subsequent trial Collins was found to be guilty but insane and was ordered to be detained at the King's pleasure.

Precisely what was Collins motivation in all of this was never fully established. Certainly he was of unsound mind with a history of mental instability. The odd references to "Epsilon" and "Wine is good" at the end of the first threatening letter were completely nonsensical but typical of his everyday speech, where random thoughts would mingle with and obfuscate his sentences. He did not stand to gain from the money demanded in the threatening letters, since that money, if sent, would have gone to the persons in whose names he had written the letters. Rather, his intent seems to have been to cause trouble for those persons, starting with Mr. Dewing. Was he perhaps dissatisfied with the disbursement of his father's will, and/or believe that Dewing had witheld a part of his father's estate - something for which he desired to gain revenge? And the letter to the King, in which he implicated Golding and Stenning, came after those denizens of the law had questioned him on the previous matter and may have been motivated by an ill-will that event raised in him against them. But why Miss Carthy? She could not possibly have done him any harm, but she had been in the newspapers recently over the success of her production of "Twelfth Night." Was it this that suggested her as an unlucky pawn in the machinations of his fevered brain? Whatever the reasons, it seems improbable that he would ever have attempted to carry out his threats - the threats themselves were the means of his revenge.