BREACH OF PROMISE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 202, 23 May 1936, Page 22

BREACH OF PROMISE

Phone Call Stops Wedding

The wedding guests had arrived—/ the best man was ready—the bride had her wedding-gown ou—and then came a phone call that the wedding must be put off. This was a statement made to Mr. Justice Finlay at Lewes Assizes when Miss Doris Maud Burton, of Hove, was awarded £220 damages with costs against Mr. Hubert Rickard Fowler, of Gunnersbury, Chiswick, a bank clerk, for breach of promise of marriage. Mr. John Flowers, K.C., for Miss Burton, said that three days before the wedding, which had been fixed for September 21. last year, Mr. Fowler telephoned from London that the ceremony could not take place as his mother was too ill. Miss Burton said it was impossible to put it off. ’ Two hours before the wedding he

telephoned from Loudon that bis mother was very bad and that be could not leave her. Miss Burton’s brother went to London and saw Mr. Fowler’s mother, who said that he (Mr. Fowler) had gone away for the week-end. The mother, who was supposed to be ill, was quite well. Mr. Flowers added that Mr. Fowler "was not only a cad, but such a coward that he would not go into the witnessbox to say it was his mother’s fault that he could not marry this girl.” Miss Burton had been cruelly and unkindly treated by this man without any excuse. Summing up, Mr. Justice Finlay said, "You may think a more unheroic defendant has never appeared in any court.”