From 1867, when the _British Monarchy_ first associated this story with Mr Bradlaugh's name, down to 1880, when my father commenced a prosecution against a man named Edgcumbe, not a single year passed without some repetition of it. Since this prosecution, although it still occasionally shows signs of life, it is not nearly so vigorous. The story was circulated, not merely by vulgar and irresponsible purveyors of slander, but even by persons whose position gave an air of unimpeachable veracity to anything they might choose to say. The first person to relate the "watch" story orally of Mr Bradlaugh was Mr Charles Capper, M.P., who, as it may be remembered, told it with some detail at a public meeting at Sandwich during the general election of 1868, giving the name of Mr Charles Gilpin as his authority.[30] My father at once wrote to Mr Capper that he had read his speech "with indignation, but without surprise, for no inventions on the part of my enemies would now surprise me." He had, he said, "seen Mr Charles Gilpin, and so far as he is concerned, I have his distinct authority to entirely deny that he ever told you anything of the kind, and I have therefore to apply to you for an immediate retraction of and apology for your cowardly falsehood, which has been industriously circulated in Northampton, and which could only have been uttered with the view of doing me injury in my candidature in that borough. Permit me to add, that I never in my life (either in Northampton or any other place) have uttered any phrase affording a colour of justification for the monstrous words you put in my mouth." [Footnote 30: _Deal and Sandwich Mercury_, Sept. 26.] But Mr Charles Capper would not retract, and would not apologise, so Mr Bradlaugh, who felt all the more incensed about this, because of the dragging in of Mr Gilpin's name as authority for the slander, brought an action against him. Before it could be brought into Court, however, Mr Capper died. * * * * * In the December of the same year, during the hearing of the proceedings in the _Razor_ libel case, the counsel for the defendant Brooks asked Mr Bradlaugh, in cross-examination, "Did you not once at a public lecture take out your watch and defy the Deity, if he had an existence, to strike you dead in a certain number of minutes?" "Never. Such a suggestion is utterly unjustifiable," was my father's indignant answer. * * * * *