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- As applying to Mr. Richardson’s strictures on Mr. Hume, on page 143 although as stated in brackets, Mr. Hume’s statement of some societies having failed through mismanagement and fraud was clearly not intended to apply to local societies. Yet even Mr. Richardson, with all his bumptiousness knew perfectly well that in July of the same year, at the Sussex Assizes a former treasurer of the “Old Friendly” – Richardson’s own society – was tried for having defrauded the society of £30, which was not discovered at the time (1853), but afterwards when the books came to be investigated, it was found that an alteration of figures of “a very gross character had been made” The defence set up was the Statute of Limitation, but which Justice Blackburn thought would not apply. The defendant’s advocate also admitted that notwithstanding the mystification of figures, the case was so clear that he would decline to address the jury. Here, then, was a case both of mismanagement and fraud in the very society that Mr. Richardson, as a steward, sought so bombastically to defend.
