HID FROM HUSBAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 122, 22 May 1920, Page 19

HID FROM HUSBAND.

DISCOXTEXTED ♦.WIFE'S _OXG SECLUDED LIFE. For the first time ft fifty years the curtain has been raised on a romance which, beginning as far back as -1872, continued in varying stages and with varying Incidents right down to March of 1919, when one of the principal characters in the strange drama died. Thie was Mrs. Mary -Hopkins, and th_ story of her life baa come to light with the claim, In the Probate Court In London, of her husband for a grant of administration of his wife's estateMr. Hopkins also sought to nave set aside a protection order granted in 1880, which he said was obtained on a false case put by his wife .before the magistrates' clerk, to whom she afterwards bequeathed all her property. For the beginning of the romantic affair one has to go back to the year 1869, When Arthur iHopkins, the deceased womanhusband—then a youth or seventeen—was apprenticed to an engineer named Chorley, at ilidhurst, in Sussex.

•Ths Chorleys were well-to-do people. Amongst their children was Mary, who was then A boy of fourteen, named John Hobert Sayer, lived with them. When iHopkins was nineteen there were love passages between him and Mary, notwithstanding that she was fifteen years older, and they were married. Twin children were born on July 29, 1872.

•Hopkins -was at that time earning only fourteen shillings a week, "but Mrs. Hopkins had independent means. She soon became discontented with her surroundings/ She had -married ibeneath her, she thought, and refused to associate with her husband's friends.

On August 20, 1873, the elder of the twins died, and on that day (Mrs. -Hopkins left her husband, and he had never seen her since.

'In 1575 John Robert Sayer obtained an appointment as clerk of, the court at Bow Street Police Court, and Mrs. Hopkins ■renewed her acquaintance with him They ibecame on terms of close intimacy.

On October 14, 1896, Mrs. Hopkins made a will by which she left the whole of 'her property, with tbe exception of some small legacies, to Sayer. Mrs. Hopkins then returned to Mldhurst, and lived there In great seclusion, until ber death on —larch 10. 1910.

The blinds were always drawn, and her solicitor when he called could only get In with great difficulty, find was received In a Toom 11-h'ted by a single candle.

On July IS, 1900, SaTor shot himself, and the legacy to Mm was ineffective. While the protection order of dSSO stood the husband could take no share of the estate. He applied to have it set aside.

Mr. Justice Horrldge decided that 'Mr. Hopkins had proved his case, and set aside the protection order. There will be other proceedings respectin the estate.