Downfall
When Baker's companies came into financial trouble, he forged signatures on letters purporting to guarantee their debts. Baker was arrested and charged with seven counts of uttering forged documents, and pleaded guilty to six of the counts. Prosecuting counsel were Christmas Humphreys and Mervyn Griffith-Jones, while Baker was defended by Richard Levy and James Burge.
He was subsequently convicted on all seven counts and was sentenced at the Old Bailey to seven years imprisonment. Immediately on his imprisonment at HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs, Baker was given permission by the Prison Governor to write to the Speaker of the House of Commons. Explaining that he had discovered he was "unable to vacate my seat in any way while the matter was sub judice", he stated that the was not going to appeal and therefore "you can now dispossess me of my seat without delay". The Leader of the House of Commons Harry Crookshank then put down a motion "That Mr. Peter Arthur David Baker be expelled this House" which was agreed without a division on 16 December 1954. In the subsequent by-election in January 1955, South Norfolk elected Conservative John Hill as its new MP.
Read more about this topic: Peter Baker (British Politician)
Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)