The Warwickshire Herald. — 1899-07-20 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

THE SOCIETY PAPERS.  (From the World.)  The Duke and Duchess of C smaught, who wen, to Windsor Castle on the termination of their visit to Sir Maurice and Lady Fitz Gerald at Newmarket, have returned to Begshot Patk, and either on Satur. day or Monday next go to Osborne, where they will be the guests of the Queen until after the Cowes week. The Princesses Margaret and Victoria Patricia will accompany their parents to Osborne, and Prince Arthur is to Join them there when he leaves Eton. The Duke of Connaught will "do "Goode mid on twe days from Osborne. The late Czarewitch was a mere name at the Court of St. Petersburg, for he had lived for many years in the Caucasus. and his mother, the Empress Dowager, and his sister and brother-in-law, the Grand Duchess 'Celtic and the Grand Duke Alexander Michailovitch, were the only members .4 the Imperial family who had seen him for a long time past. The Czarewitch lived in seclusion, surroundocrty a little Court of congenial friends, anti amused himself with getting up concert., theatrical performances, picnic excursions, and so forth. Ile disliked all mention of political affairs of any kind, and always detested State functions and file elaborate ceremonial of Russian Court life.  People are asking who the "Mrs. Kingsente" is of whose name such frequent use has been made in the Bankruptcy Court lately. Is she a real person or an imaginary being? At first sight it looks rather as if she were the latter; a kind of legal "Mrs. Harris," like John Doe and Richard Hoe in the old time, invented for the purpose of extending the jurisdiction of the tribunal with whose proceedings , she is identified. Within a very short period a noble lord and two beneficed clergymen have been made bankrupts because, as they allege, they have accepted accommodation bills to the amount of £20,000 and upwards for "Mrs. Kingscote." The peer is Lord Byron, and of the two parsons one is Mr. Moore, the Vicar of Cowley. and the other is Mr. Scott-Tucker, the Vicar of Hedington, both it Oxfordshire. But who Mrs. Kingscote is does not so clearly appear. It is said, indeed, that she is the wife of Colonel Howard Kingscote, and the daughter of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff. But, whoever she is she seems to be a most persuasive and ingenious lady, and, if all is true that one hears, a ready and effective writer on stamped paper. The report that General Sir William Lockhart is likely to resign the chief command in India is contradicted front the India Office Sir William was never in better health, and is discharging his duties to the satisfaction not only of the Serretary of ! State, but the Viceroy and Government of India also. Indeed. everything has run most smoothly since his arrival in India, and it is felt that his withdrawal from his position would be an irreparable loss to the army in India, he being posted in every detail of its organisation and having the fullest confidence of all ranks serving uoispr him. The Home Secretary is to be congratulated upon the firmness he ha shewn in batting his decision in the casa of the woman Ansell entirely upon the report of the medical experts commissioned to inquire into her mental condition, and in refusing to be moved by a sentimental outcry for which there was no sort of justification. It was high time for a stand to be made against the growing abuse of the plea of insanity in the interest of murderers whose minal motives are as obvious as their crimes are premedVated and cold blooded. To have accepted the allegation of imbecility in her family as a ground for arresting the course of justice in the case of this callous murderess, who insured her sister's life and then artfully poisoned her, would have been not only to bring the law into contempt, but to establish a most mischievous and dangerous precedent. As to those who deprecate the carrying out of the sentence solely on the ground of the prisoner's sex, it is open to them of course to attempt to obtain an alteration of the law which maintains the equality of the sexes in the matter of capital punishment. But while the law remains as it is the Home Secretary has clearly no right to interfere with its impartial enforcement.