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Then his cousin, a maiden lady, died, and left the bulk of her $230,000 estate to her elderly solicitor, one Frederick Harry Nye. Wintle brooded restlessly, concluded that Nye had somehow done his sister and himself out of the money. Lawyers told him he had no case in law. Undaunted, Wintle took action. He called up Nye, told him he was "Lord Norbury," and asked Nye to come to an apartment in Hove. Nye went. As 71 -year-old Law yer Nye related it in court last week: "
A voice said, 'Is that you. dear boy? Come in.' Wintle came out of the kitchen with a rush." Wintle threw him to the ground and, according to Nye, made him sign a £1,000 check for his sister. "After wards, he made me go into another room, take off my trousers, and put on a paper hat. Then he took photographs of me."
Promptly arrested, Wintle was triumphant. "It will be a sad day for this country when an officer and gentleman is not prepared to go to prison when he thinks he is in the right," he proclaimed. "One must expect some casualties." Added the fierce little colonel, screwing his mon ocle into his good eye: "I have been accustomed to meeting the enemy and trying to trap him wherever I have met him.
I was going to fly his trousers in triumph from my flagpole at home. But unfortunately. I was arrested before dawn."
"Do you regret your conduct?" asked the prosecutor. Wintle was incredulous. "Not in the very least!" he snapped. With that, Lieut. Colonel Wintle (ret.) wheeled and marched off to six months in prison at Wormwood Scrubs. Said London's Daily Express admiringly: "You may say or think what you like about Alfred Wintle. But here is an Englishman."