The Portland Peerage Romance

by Charles J. Archard

When Mr. Druce died there were two sons left of the alliance with Miss Berkeley, one of whom continued the Baker-street establishment.

But what was the astonishment of some of the frequenters of the purlieus of Baker-street to see the man who was supposed to have been buried visiting the same haunts where they had seen him before.

To have witnessed or heard of the funeral of a man, and then to meet that same man in his customary sphere of business afterwards, is of the nature of a ghost-story. "What did the coffin in Highgate Cemetery contain?" was the riddle.

Mrs. Druce's husband was a son of the late Mr. T.C. Druce, and it was on behalf of her son that proceedings were commenced. She made an application to the Consistory Court for a faculty granting her power to have the coffin in Highgate Cemetery opened in order to see whether it contained a body or only some heavy substance such as lead.

It was asserted that T.C. Druce had been seen alive some years after it was supposed that he had been buried; that he was identified as the Duke of Portland, and that there were persons cognisant of the fact that the Duke and Druce were one and the same person before 1864. Dr. Tristram, the judge, granted the faculty, but notice of appeal was given to prevent the coffin being opened.

The case then came before the Divisional Court, which ruled that the London Cemetery Company was right in resisting the order of Dr. Tristram, and that the grave could not be opened without the licence of the Home Secretary. The decision was in effect that Dr. Tristram had no jurisdiction to make such an order, except as conditional on the authority of the Home Secretary being obtained.

At length the case reached the Court of Appeal in December, 1899, when Mrs. Druce made no appearance to support the faculty she had obtained, and the appeal was dismissed with costs against her.

In the course of the proceedings the statements of two or three persons who knew Mr. Druce were published in the Press.

Mrs. Hamilton's narrative was to the effect that from a girl she had known the same gentleman both as Mr. Druce and the Duke of Portland, her father, Mr. Robert Lennox Stuart, being a great friend of his from boyhood days, and, it was averred, distantly related. There were frequent visits both to Cavendish-square and to the Baker-street Bazaar, and on one occasion, about 1849, Mrs. Hamilton says she was taken by her father to Welbeck where they were met by Druce. Then, in 1851, her father attended the marriage of Druce and Annie May Berkeley. At length the time came when Druce determined to be dead to the outer world. "I must die," he said to Mr. Stuart.

The arrangements for the death were duly carried out and there ensued a sham burial, at which Mrs. Hamilton says her father was present.