In praise of Montague Richard Leverson (1830-1925) Part 2
Did Leverson steal his clients' money when he fled the country in 1867?
Esther Rantzen on 'Who Do You Think You Are?' 2008 said:
Now in his 30s and working as a lawyer, Montague Richard [Leverson] left the country with the police at his heels after a large lump of his clients' money had disappeared.
The 1867 fraud case has to be seen in the context of Leverson’s political radicalism, evident as early as March 1858 when he appeared in court for a man accused of “Alleged Libel on the French Emperor”, and declared that “Abuse of a ruler must … be allowed to any extent” (‘The Times’, 1st, 24th, 26 March 1858). In the 1860s Leverson’s London home was a centre for “lovers of freedom, revolutionaries, refugees” and among his associates were Garibaldi, Mazzini, and other Italian radicals (Diana McVeagh, “Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music”, Boydell Press, 2005). Certainly his elder brother George Bazett Colvin Leverson was a prominent figure in the London group which raised funds to support Garibaldi (‘The Times’, 23rd-24th August and 12th September 1860, 13th April 1864). In 1862 he owned ‘Leverson, Solicitor’ and took as his articled clerk the prominent radical Charles Bradlaugh, republican, founder of the National Secular Society, and later a member of Parliament. In 1866 Leverson was active in the Reform League and was a steward at demonstrations (‘The Times’, 3rd July and 16th August 1866). In the same year he published his “Reformers’ Reform Bill”, and submitted a petition to the House of Commons for reforms to procedure in courts of law (‘The Times’, 16th February 1866).
The December 1866 fraud warrant against Leverson was issued because he was deemed liable for financial losses suffered when a client’s Russian bonds were seized. Leverson had acted in court for the plaintiffs in an attempt to recover these seized bonds, declaring that his client had obtained them from “insurgents engaged in insurrection against the Russian Government” and that the bonds were “lawful spoils of war” (‘The Times’, 7th and 21st March 1864, 6th May 1865).
So when Leverson fled the country in 1867 he had not stolen his clients’ money.