The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-04-30 00:00:00

THE SEFTON LIBEL CASE.

Mr. W. C. Long. Eddor and Managing Proprietor
of the Sheffield Dodo Telegrook, has sent the following
letter to The nous for
.publication
. . . .

T think it is not usual In this country to condemn a man
without hearing from him a word of explanation or defence.
I therefore appeal to your sense of I airnms to insert this
plain statement of fact in the matter of the unhappy libel
which has been so severely commented upon in your columns.
In the first place, it is not true that the rumor with re-
spect to the Prince of Wales first appeared or was origineted
in the Shegield Daily Tileyraph. The unfortunate para-
graph in which the Prince was named appeared in a London
evening paper on Saturday, April 2. It wta telegraphed to
this office, in common with nearly all the daily newspaper
offices in the provinces, by the agents of the Press Associa-
tion in London. Several country papers had previously
published the same rumour, with even greater cironinstan-
tiality ; and It must have been current long before. for I
have before me an American paper of Starch 30, in which a
London telegram of March 20, couples the Prince's name
with "another divorce snot," th ugh other names are
omitted. The Shegield Daily Telegraph, therefore, in no
sense originated the scandal. What it is responsible for, and
I most deeply regret it, is that the paragraph so copied from
the London evening paper, and telegraphed here, was pub-
lished by us two days after its appearance in London, and
that in my absence through illness, without my knowledge
or assent, one of my sub-editors, in s moment of deplorable
indicretion, Folded to this paragraph a into containing the
names of the Earl and Countt ss Sefton.

......- .....
Under ordinary circumstances I should have wafted
until the case came again into court before making public an
explanation which has already in substance been tendered,
coupled with the amplest apology, to those who have so
much reason to feel aggrieved ; but, as the case has been
prejudged, I have no other resource than to seek the same
publicity for explaining the facts, and to ask whether, after
hearing them, I can be held crin inally responsible for an act
in which I had no part, which is contrary to the whole
tenonr of my instructions, and which I repudiated and
deeply deplored from the first moment when It came to my
knowledge In Sheffield I need not urge the character which
the Sheraeld Daily Telegraph has maintained for freed, in
from libellous writing. No instructions can have been more
express or repeated than those given in this olli le to avoid
any such literary garbage, and in the six years during which
the paper has been in the hands of its present proprietors
not a single libel case has come into court in which we have
been defendants.

This Is not the history of a formal given to the style of
writing which you PO justly condemn. In a more humble
way the Sheffield Daily Telegraph may claim to be as ccu-
scieritioua and as eager to avoid offending the law sm any
newspaper in or out of London.
But the experience of editors and managers, even of tile
most carefully conducted journals, will teach them how iru-
poesible it is, being no much at the mercy of subordinates,
to avoid offence. In this instance a grave offence hoe been
committed—one which, apart from legal consequences, has
given to all who are interested in this paper the greatest
concern. Under such circumstances, and remembering that
lam the subject of criminal, not civil proceedings, i think
I may ask for the consideration of other journalists, includ-
ing even those who, from natural Indignation at the offence,
have judged and condemned me unheard. I say nothing
now about the harshness of the law which, as I believe In
the cue of journalists alone, makes an Englishman crimi-
nally responsible for the acts of another, even acts which
he may with all his heart deplore as I do, and against which
he may have tried to guard by every reasonable precaution.