THE LEICESTER MERCURY

Leicester, Leicestershire, England

24 July 1934

(page 1)

Aleister Crowley On Trial

ACCUSED OF RECEIVING LETTERS

STOLEN FROM ‘BETTY MAY’

Edward Alexander Crowley (58), described as an explorer, pleaded not guilty at the Old Bailey, to-day, to the charge of receiving four original letters and one copy of a letter, alleged to have been stolen from Mrs. Betty Sedgwick, known as “Betty May,” a model.

Mr. Melford Stevenson (prosecuting) said that in 1932 Crowley became a plaintiff in a civil action for damages for libel against publishers, in respect of a book in which reflections, according to Crowley, were made upon him in the name of Aleister Crowley.

Mrs. Sedgwick had given the solicitors for the defence certain information and gave evidence at the hearing of the action. She lived at an address in Seymour-street in June last year, and there also lived there a man named Cruze. She had, in an attaché case there some letters including four that had passed between her and the solicitors disclosing the fact that she had received certain sums as expenses and another relating to arrangements with publishers concerning a book she was preparing.

When she went to a cottage in the country towards the end of that June, she found that the letters had disappeared. They were produced by Crowley’s counsel at the hearing of the case last April.

Mr. Stevenson told the jury that they would hear that they were handed by Crowley to a clerk to his solicitors during the preparation of his case. It was not known who stole them, but the circumstances were such that it was for Crowley to explain his possession of them.

Mrs. Sedgwick gave evidence, and when asked by Mr. Gallop (for the defence) who was Captain Eddie Cruze, replied “He was a friend of mine. I think he stole those papers. I know he did.”

She denied that Cruze was drinking a bottle or two of whiskey a day, or that she herself was drinking.

Hearing adjourned till to-morrow.