The West Australian - Saturday, May 25, 1895

NEWS AND NOTES.

THE discreditable dispute and fracas between the Marquis of Queensberry and his eldest son, Lord Douglas of Hawick, has aroused considerable interest in this colony, where the latter is well known to many as Lord Percy Douglas. The accompanying extract from a Home paper sheds some light on the circumstances of a most painful family scandal: "Lord Alfred Douglas, the second son of the Marquis of Queensberry, has called at several news agencies to say there was not the slightest truth in his father's allegations against Mr. Wilde and myself. 'My father,' he said, 'is a madman. All the family are against him in this matter. My elder brother and I drove with Mr. Wilde to court to-day, and we shall do everything in our power to vindicate him from my father's charges.' Lord Alfred is a sallow, weak, lank individual, who looks as though he had exhausted all there is in life. He is 25 years old, but appears to be ten years older. A little later in the afternoon Lord Douglas of Hawick, the eldest surviving son of the Marquis of Queensberry, made an even more damaging statement against his father. He said he was just home from Australia, and he had assured himself that there was no truth in his father's charges, which were aimed as much against his own son as they were against Mr. Wilde. 'My father has been a brute to his family,' he said. 'He is responsible for the death of my mother, and my eldest brother. He now seems bent on ruining my younger brother and me. We shall do all we can to help to clear Mr. Wilde of this infamous charge. My father's so-called evidence consists of anonymous letters which he himself wrote to my brother, one of which was produced in court to-day. The Magistrate very properly suppressed these letters. They contain the wildest and most dreadful charges against many prominent people. I believe father is of unsound mind, but there is a good deal of vice in his madness.' Lord Douglas, in contrast with his brother, is a keen, energetic man of business, only 27 years old, but very prominent just now in connection with the development of gold discoveries in West Australia. The case is naturally making an immense sensation in London. As matters stands only two results seem possible, either Mr. Wilde will be irretrievably ruined and banished from society, or the Marquis of Queensbury will be put under guardianship as an irresponsible lunatic. The English law forbids the expression of opinion till the jury has decided the case."