NOTORIETY IN DEATH

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 9, 8 December 1926, Page 14

NOTORIETY IN DEATH

LONDON WOMAN’S FAIRY STORIES. The young woman known as “Peggy Scott,” who had lived a super-gay life mostly in London, with dashes in times of her greater prosperity to the Continent, died in circumstances which needed an inquest to be held, says the Empire News. She was not 30, and save as a warning of the inevitable end of a career such as hers, the inquest on a girl tired of life at her age might have passed with little comment but for the ambition (?), even in death, of the silly woman to be accounted one of the intimate friends of Valentino. She claimed to have been helped and befriended by him, which is quite possible. _ What i§, not quite understandable is the dead girl’s desire to be accounted one of those lights o’ love whom the film star Adonis is alleged to have captured. She claimed more. LETTERS DISCREDITED. Peggy herself was a mystery. Whence she came nobody knew, whither wending as the hideous unnatural years rolled on everybody foresaw, and who she really was the inquest did not reveal. Her claimed to be an intimate of Valentino was mentioned at the inquest. The statements in her letters left behind to explain her suicide are not credited. She seems to have taken the opportunity to end her life in circumstances • that would draw attention to her, and she carried out the plan successfully, killing herself because the death of Valentino “had left her nothing in the world worth living for.” At least Valentino was not guilty of that.

The inquest on her elicited a remarkable protest against these and further posthumous accusations. “Peggy” Scott’s letters, when she had fallen on hard times, revealed her vanity and the attraction that notoriety still possessed for her. Her claim on Valentino was inferred in two letters “Peggy” left behind her. There were many others which revealed some of her career, and also the fact —said the coroner—that she was not very reliable as to her own statements about herself..

She was temperamental—imagined things and wrote them. Evidently the coroner did not credit her statements in the letters read in the court, and after the verdict a lady, who gave the name of Miss C. Rivers, stood up in court and protested against the statements made with regard to the association, of the dead girl with Valentino.

PUBLIC PROTEST. Miss Rivers declared that she was a friend of Valentino, and that other friends of the dead film star had asked her to make a public protest on his and their behalf, because of the unfairness of the allegations made, and the wrong impression which they conveyed. The intervention was a surprise, because not only in the letter which she left behind, but in conversations with her friends, the girl now dead claimed friendship with Valentino. Over and over again, it is said, she had related stories of how she had met the film star at Biarritz in 1922, and how, from that time onward, they had been on terms of the greatest friendship. She had gone to great lengths in describing how the film star had, at one time, been on the verge of marrying her, but this story she afterwards altered, explaining that there were reasons why this could not come about. Miss Rivers, however, declared that it would have been impossible to Valentino to have met Peggy Scott as, in 1922, when she was supposed to lia.ve done so, he was on a Mediterranean tour, and busily engaged in making the picture of “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” The Coroner: You know that for a fact? Miss Rivers: Yes, I have a letter hero to prove it. You say, of course, that she was not associated with Valentino? —Yes, but unfortunately, it has come out that she was supposed to be associated with him and I am going to make representation in that connection. She went on to say that in the case of a film actor it was always more unfortunate, as the “worst construction was always put upon such suggestions.” Valentino’s first visit was when he came to England, with his wife, in 1923, Miss Rivers declared, and on behalf of the dead man, and his friends, including Mr Ullman, Valentino’s manager, she desired to correct the wrong impressions given. UNKNOWN ORIGIN. Detective Davies corroborated this statement by saying that he had proved that Miss Scott was in Romo at the time she was supposed to have met Valentino, and Miss Rivers concluded: “In fairness to the dead I hope the facts will be taken into consideration. This has terribly distressed his friends, knowing the type of man he was. They are distressed that a false impression should be given of him and his character.” As to Miss Scott, Detective-Inspector Dale stated that, after making inquiries all over London, he had been unable to trace any relatives. She had received a great many letters in connection with the case, and as a result inquiries had been made in Norfolk, Norwich and Swindon, but without result. Not one of her many friends and acquaintances could throw any light upon her origin or identity. The coroner recorded that Margaret Murray Scott had killed herself by taking corrosive sublimate whilst of unsound mind.