"Son" of Clarence wanted $3,000

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December 4, 1929

Clarence Guy Gordon Haddon, who says he is the illegitimate son of the late Duke of Clarence and Avondale, brother of King George V, " has been remanded to jail, reports the Associated Press.

Haddon, who is jobless, wrote to the king saying he "was forced to wash his own dirty linen in a backroom 'and that of the royal family in public for a living.'"

His statement and extract from letters were read at a preliminary hearing today in a London court at  Haddon's hearing.  He has been charged with an attempt to extort money from King George.

Haddon, who is 43 years old, will learn on December 12 whether he will stand trial.

He wrote that he would have been "satisfied" with £600 ($3000) a year, and "enough ready money to start a modern boarding house."

"I don't want a great fortune in life, but only a comfortable living," he wrote in his letter. "It would only have taken a year's income from my late father to have made me the happiest and most contented man in the British Empire. It would have meant so little to the royal family.

"The blessing of God would have been on their household for years, whereas now I will be a byword to the world and so will the name of the royal family.

"Within a few days, I have made sandwich boards giving the particulars of my case.  I shall personally carry this board about the streets of London to secure justice."

In his opening statement, the prosecutor declared: "There is absolutely no evidence to support his assertion."



[Haddon was born in Fulham, London. September 28, 1890.)  He married on December 25, 1915, St. Clements, Worcester, Worcester, England to Addie Bowyer Phillips (1883). This marriage did not last as Addie remarried in 1923 to Richard Ward.

He emigrated to the United States on August 10, 1930.  The Declaration of Intent states that he was separated from his (2nd) wife,  Bistra P. who was born in Sofia, Bulgaria on November 25, 1923.  She was born in Sofia in January 1896.   The couple was separated when he filed to apply to become an American citizen on January 7, 1931.  At some point, however, he returned to England. 

Haddon died on June 23, 1943, at St Mary Islington Hospital, London.]