Word: crawford
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Died. Stanton Chapman Crawford, 68, acting chancellor since June of the University of Pittsburgh, longtime dean of the faculty, who earned good marks for bringing in $5,000,000 in emergency state aid to ease the school's $27 million deficit, but hardly had time to tackle basic problems of high costs and declining income from gifts; of a heart attack after leaving a fund-raising dinner; in Pittsburgh...
French Vice. The plot was sprung by his sister-in-law's sister, a Mrs. Donald Crawford, who suddenly informed her husband that she had been "ruined" by Sir Charles. What's more, she told him that Sir Charles had taught her "every French vice" and had persuaded her to play three-in-a-bed with himself and his housemaid. Mr. Crawford thereupon decided to sue his wife for divorce and to name Sir Charles as corespondent. Dilke duly protested that he had never laid a finger on Mrs. Crawford, but he knew that the prudish Victorian public...
...dead by most of his friends, ripped apart by the gutter press, bewildered by expensive lawyers who gave him bad advice, belabored by indignant judges who prejudged him a monster of depravity, Sir Charles staggered pathetically through two sensational trials. Crawford won his divorce; Dilke was lucky to escape prosecution for perjury and perversion. His constituents turned him out of office...
With nothing left but cash and courage, Dilke grimly continued the fight. During the next decade a committee established to investigate the case produced evidence which strongly suggests that Mrs. Crawford's story was a lie from beginning to end. In fact, says Jenkins, Mrs. Crawford had an affair with a certain Captain Forster, from whom she had contracted syphilis. Unable to continue her marriage without disclosing her condition, Mrs. Crawford cynically decided to get both Dilke and a divorce in one fell swoop...
Fatal Split. Why did she want to destroy Dilke? Author Jenkins argues that despite his protestation of utter innocence, Dilke actually did have an affair with Mrs. Crawford before she was married; that Dilke refused to marry her; that she ruined him because he had "ruined" her. But nobody knows for certain. What is certain, or seems so on the evidence Jenkins supplies, is that Dilke was the only man who could hold the Liberals together. Within a year of his political demise the party split, and Gladstone's last administration foundered in failed majorities. One woman...