The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-25 00:00:00

The Leeds Bankruptcy Court Scandals.

The papers relating to the resignation of Mr. Wilde as
Registrar of the Bankruptcy Court at Leeds were issued on
Tuesday. On the 6th of April last year, Mr. Wilde's atten-
tion was called, by direction of the Lord Chancellor, to the
fact that the accounts of the official assignees and messen-
gers of his court were said to be certified by Mr. Commis-
sioner Ayrton, when in point of fact Mr. Ayrton had not
seen them. This, Mr. Wilde was told, was " a very grave
offence," and he was asked to give immediate explanation.
Three days after Mr. Wilde writes :—" I am sorry to hear
the Lord Chancellor thinks that I have committed a very
grave offence in signing the document to which your letter
alludes. I signed it; the gentleman (Mr. Carrick) present-
ing it to me, representing that it had been submitted to,
and approved of, by Mr. Commissioner Ayrton ; and a
statement now before me, dated the Bth of April, signed by
Mr. Commissioner Ayrton, shows that all the items in the
account signed by me were on that day approved and allowed
by the Commissioner, except the charge for petty disburse-
ments, which are now under the bill audited by me." Mr.
Wilde was called upon to send up the document ho referred
to, which he did, and it bore at the foot of the accounts the
words, "I hereby allow the above account. W. S. Ayrton,
Commissioner, April, 1862." Mr. Wilde hereupon received
the following letter from the Court of Bankruptcy:—" Mr.
Carrick, one of the official assignees, asserts that you owe
him £l3l, and Mr. Needell, one of the messengers, that you
owe him £25, all for money borrowed. I am directed by
the Lord Chancellor to ask you whether these statements
are true." Mr. Wilde returned the following answer—" In
1857 I met with a heavy loss through the fraud of two
friends. On going to Paris in great distress of mind, it
seems I had from Mr. Needell £25, for which I gave him
an I 0 U, which fact I had forgotten till I saw Mr. Needell
this morning. I have paid him the same sum this morning
by cheque. In the same year I was obliged to get my
bankers to make me a heavy advance, which, with the as-
sistance of the advance of my friend Mr. Carrick, of £l3l,
enabled me to provide against the loss above alluded to ;
but, as I presume from your letter the Chancellor thinks
that I ought not to have sought for such friendly assist-
ance, being a registrar of the court of which Mr. Carrick
was one of the official assignees, I have repaid him also."
Four reports made to the Lord Chancellor by Mr. Commis-
sioner Ayrton and Mr. Harding were then forwarded to
Mr. Wilde, and he was asked to reply to the charges they
appeared to involve, which it was said were these throe :
—" 1. That accounts which ought to have been submitted
to and allowed by your Commissioners were certified by
you as having been submitted to and sanctioned by him,
without his having ever seen such accounts ; and that
thereby large sums had been improperly allowed to the
official assignees. 2. That you have been in the habit of
taxing the bills of the messengers, without calling for the
production of the vouchers for the sums alleged to have
been paid by them ; and 3. That you had borrowed
money both from the official assignees and messengers of
the court, and thereby destroyed your independence and
efficiency." On the 24th of May Mr. Wilde was called to
put in his answer within a week, under penalty of being
called on to show cause in open court why he should not
be dismissed. This he did on the 30th. In reply to the
first charge against him, he said, "I did not certify that
accounts were submitted to and approved of by Mr. Com-
missioner Ayrton. I certify only to the fact beyond dis-
pute, that the reasonable office expenses had been previ-
ously submitted to and sanctioned by Mr. Commissioner
Ayrton.' I certify as I did because the official assignee told
mo that the Commissioner had sanctioned and approved
the items of ' reasonable office expenses,' whose honour
and integrity had been unimpeached for the eleven years
I had acted with him in the same court ; and he placed
before me a document conclusively proving the fact of
'reasonable office expenses,' dated Bth April, 1862, signed
by Mr. Commissioner Ayrton, and a similar document
was made and signed by the senior Commissioner as a
scale to regulate future `reasonable office expenses."
Knowing Mr. Ayrton's watchfulness, Mr. Wilde con-
cluded that as he had not objected to he procedure
adopted, he was satisfied with it. As to the second
charge, Mr. Wilde admitted that he placed great con-
fidence in the messenger, but "I did," he says, "occa-
sionally ask for vouchers when I considered that they
could and should be produced." "As to the third charge,"
said Mr. Wilde, " that of borrowing money both of the offi-
cial assignee and the messenger, and thereby destroying my
independence and efficiency, I am exceedingly sorry in this
respect that I have done acts calling down upon me the
Chancellor's censure. The £25 I had of the messenger, it
seems, many years ago ; I had it when called in haste to
Paris. I purposed repaying it on my return ; I did not see
him for some time afterwards, and it escaped my memory,
otherwise I should not have allowed it to remain unpaid.
As for the loan from Mr. Carrick, I had it some years ago,
to enable me to meet the exigencies of a sudden loss, and
I did not know that our official connection necessarily de-
barred us from exercising the usual privileges of friendship.'
In July, Mr. Wilde petitioned that he might bo allowed to
retire with a pension equal to two-thirds of his salary, put-
ting in a certificate that he was suffering from impaired
sight, and the Lord Chancellor made an order that the
petitioner should receive the retiring allowance prayed for