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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1753
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 18, 2005 - 4:25 pm: | 
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For some considerable time now I have been dwelling on the case of Thomas Taylor Cutbush - the father of Thomas Hayne Cutbush - and find myself beset and perplexed at why this young man would suddenly up sticks and take passage for New Zealand, and this a mere two years after his marriage to Kate Hayne, and a bare year past the birth of his son, Thomas.
Perplexed because if TTC had stayed exactly where he was in London he would have eventually inherited a massive fortune and an empire of valuable properties scattered around London and the south-east of England.
TTC did make a very good bigamous marriage into the Stoddart family of New Zealand within a year of his arrival, but make no mistake, the Stoddarts of NZ were very much the poor relations of the Flood-Cutbush clan of London and Maidstone.
So, an original thought that TTC may have fled London to improve his fortunes is patently false, for he was in fact doing himself out of a considerable fortune, which he was eventually to lose when he failed to appear in court when his fortune was being happily plundered by his immediate family, at the very same time his son was being committed to Broadmoor for life as a murderous lunatic.
Another thought has been that TTC might have been tempted by the gold rush fever of Oz and NZ at that time in history as many were, but intimate research into this matter seems to indicate otherwise, for if TTC had ever been involved in the gold mining industry of those colonies we would have found him thus… and we have not.
Why anyway would he want ‘down-under’ gold when he had all the gold in the world back home?
By our standards today TTC was worth about as much as Richard Branson.
He certainly didn’t go to New Zealand for peace and tranquillity, for he arrived in the middle of the ’New Zealand Wars’ where white settlers and Maoris were slaughtering one another wholesale.
So why did he go?
The only conclusion I reach is that he didn’t ‘go’, but rather he fled, and the fact the ship he fled on, the Commodore, had no record of his flight from England, but certainly had a record of his arrival in Wellington on the 20th January 1867, speaks volumes to me.
He missed Christmas with his wife and new born child, for he sailed in November of 1866.
1866 to 1888.
Twenty years.
Did he come back?
What did he leave behind in 1866?
Prosecution?
For what?
I have some ideas about this. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4134
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 18, 2005 - 4:41 pm: |
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At last, the notorious TTC has his own thread.
AP, as I posted some time last year, there was a court case about this time, but the only account I could get of it concerned a technical matter of law that didn't mention "Cutbush" (whoever the Cutbush was) at all.
It is possible that he had been indulging in some kind of fraud, and someone made it clear to him that he must go abroad and stay there. Perhaps Uncle Charles?
Another possibility would be that his marriage to Kate was already bigamous - that he'd been married before.
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4136
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 18, 2005 - 5:24 pm: |
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AP, just a reminder. The case I think was Regina v Cutbush and another - I have it amongst my papers somewhere - and the account furnished by the Supreme Court library solely concerned the technical matter of concurrent v consecutive sentences, and this in relation to one Frederick Paine, of Maidstone (I think), who exposed himself. Unless we can find a newspaper account, it looks as if we'll never know the details. The Times mentions it, but always, so far as I can see, in relation to the law issue.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1754
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 18, 2005 - 5:28 pm: |
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Yes, Robert, it is about time the father of all this had some air in his wings.
I suppose a serial bigamist must inherently be involved in fraud?
The court case you mention is the Maidstone one isn't it? I too have found it difficult to tease out.
When looking at anything like this, I do try and dig out patterns, and I've found some fairly convincing patterns linking 1866 to 1888.
But hey, it's probably the high quality brandy I'm drinking tonight, but I'll pursue it anyway.
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1951
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 5:17 pm: |
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Robert
there is an interesting little case from 1879 where this chap flees earlier to the Americas to escape prosecution from some minor offence, and then eventually returns to find that he has been dispossesed of all his properties and inheritance in the meantime, throws himself on the mercy of the court in an attempt to claim his inheritance, and the court tells him to 'buggar off' or they will prosecute him for the minor offence, and then refuse to name him as that might well lead to his prosecution by the very court he is standing in!
Total madness, but that's the LVP.
I was just thinking that this really could have happened to TTC, and his name would never have come up.
The Times, October 21st 1879, search term 'indecent assault'.
Worth a read. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4363
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 5:42 pm: |
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As you say, AP, totally mad. Here we have a magistrate telling a wanted man to skedaddle quick before the police can catch him.
It does have certain resonances with TTC.
Robert |
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