3 FEBRUARY 1917, Page 1

Four arrests have been made in connexion with an extraordinary

charge of conspiracy to murder Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Arthur Henderson. At Derby on- Wednesday only evidence of the arrest was given. The accused persons are Mrs. Wheeldon, aged fifty (a second-hand clothes dealer); her unmarried daughter, aged thirty (a school teacher); a married daughter (Mrs. Mason), aged twenty-seven, who is also a school teacher; and her son-in-law, A. G. Mason, aged twenty-four, who is a chemist's assistant. Mrs. Wheeldon said the charge was trumped up because her son was a conscientious objector. She took a high line against the authorities for having, es she alleged, confined her and her daughters in an icy celL The arrests have caused great astonishment, very largely we suppose because of the incongruity between th3 character of the alleged offence and the profession of the younger women and the support given by the mother to the doctrine of conscientious objectors.