Broadstone, Wimborne
March 17th. 1907
Rev[eran]d Archdeacon Colley1
Dear Sir
For reasons already given the utmost I can do for you is to make an affidavit as to what I saw — laying stress on the essential features.
You can get lots of people to give evidence as to the essential features of Maskelyne's2 Show, & then evidence — as being independent — will be better than mine.
If your legal adviser would come down & see me, we could [2] together, arrange the exact form of the Affidavit that will best serve the purpose. I should also want to see a copy of your offers to Maskelyne (There were 2 I believe) as by then you will be bound.
I was a witness for Slade3, when he was prosecuted by for Ray-Lankester4, & the Magistrate ruled then, that no evidence whatever of what other people had witnessed with the same medicine had any weight. All he had [3] to do was to decide whether on the one particular occasion when Ray Lankester & Donkin were there, fraud was practised — & he decided that, by the evidence & by the rules of common sense & general experience, there was.
I doubt therefore whether my evidence will have any weight whatever. But I will give you my affidavit if your lawyer wants it.
Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]
P.S. I have been in several lawsuits myself and have a pretty good idea of legal methods.
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP1508.1287)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP1508,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP1508