Harry Darde's Plight

New York, 1895

Did He or a Namesake Get Mrs. George Arnold's Letter?

Harry Darde, of Hammel's Station, Rockaway Beach, was before United States Commissioner Bellows in Brooklyn on Tuesday charged with illegally signing for and receiving a registered letter addressed to Mrs. George Arnold. He explained that there were two Mrs. George Arnolds and two Harry Dardes of Hammel's Station, and that the Mrs. Arnold to whom the letter was addressed is not the same Mrs. Arnold that made the complaint. The Mrs. Arnold to whom the letter was addressed, he said, really got it and the other Harry Darde signed for it.

Commissioner Bellows asked the accused to write his name, and when he had done so the signature was compared with that on the registered letter receipt. The two signatures were so much alike that Commissioner Bellows decided to hold Darde in $500 bonds for examination on May 22.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, May 17, 1895, p. 1.