EXTRAORDINARY BEEACH OF PEOMISE CASE.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 73, 24 September 1881, Page 4

EXTRAORDINARY BEEACH OF PEOMISE CASE.

A PERFIDIOUS CURATE. An extraordinary breaoh of promise case haß jußt been heard at the Warwick Aaaizes. The plaintiff was Mies Kate Lamb, now of Mandeville Place, Manchester Square, London, and the defendant was the fiev. A. G. Fryer, M.A., one of the curates of Leamington parish churoh, under the Hon. and Boy. Canon Leigh. The damages were laid at .£3OOO. Mr. Lawrence opened the case for the plaintiff, who is the daughter of a late solicitor at Andover, where the defendant, whose relatives livo at Tnnbridge Wells, became ouratein May, 1878. The vicar having been appointed Bishop of Pretoria, the " Clergy Honse " there was broken up, when the defendant went to live with plaintiff's mother. Soon after he made plaintiff an offer, and pnt his own signet ring on her finger. From this time they were regarded as engaged. There wore 2f miles of correspondence, contained in 900 letters, the parties writing to each other almost daily for nearly 18 months. 'I he plaintiff was about ten years older than the defendant, who is now about 32 ; but it was a fact, Mr. Lawrence said, of which the defendant was fully aware. The defence was that the promise of mtrriago was conditional, and that the wedding was not to take place until defondant had obtained a living or some permanent preferment in the Church. Miss Lamb, the plaintiff, was called, and was allowed to be seated iv the dock. She was dressed in black, was ladylike, looked much younger than her admitted age, and was deoidedly attractive and good looking. After speaking of the early oircnmstances of their acquaintance, she said that defendant assured her he considered an engagement sacred, and that they only went to God's house for His blessing, as they were virtually man and wife from the moment they were betrothed. The plaintiff wag examined as to the contents of the numerons letters. In one, dated May, 1878, the defendant said he was ready to fight one man who had been paying plaintiff attentions, although he had an idea that there wero " about two yards of him." In the same month the defendant took her to Tunbridge Wells, where he introduced her to his father and mother, who approved of the engagemont. In June ot the same year defendant, alluding to his intoning, said be might sing like the braying of an ass and his vicar would roll his eyes upwards and exclaim, " Beautiful and melodious indeed." (Laughter.) He added, " I should like my darling to play a little — a hymn for the children at school, a dance for the children at home, and an enlivening ditty for tho husband as he reposes in the arm chair." In a subsequent letter, dated Feast cf St. Barnabas, he sent her a sketch of two doves seated on an oak, respecting which he remarked that one was seated above the other, indicating rule, anthority, and power. In the next letter, when she had taken some linen to the school to bo made up, learning it could not be finished until November, he told her to fetch it away, as she would want it for her trousseau long before then. He also suggested that she should pnt a cross, and then E. and L. followed by a cross, and to make the L. so that it could readily be converted into F., or, as he explained it, from Lamb into Lamb and Fry. (Roars of laughter.) In another place he described a fashionable wedding at Lew, in which he had taken part, and added he was offered, but refused, a sovereign in the vestry. She might call this foolish, but he disliked " tips ;" it placed him co much on a footing with the clerk. (Laughter.) Had it have been sent to him afterwards, he should probably have kept it. In the following June he said if she refused him as a curate he should go off to his work alone, but if she should be content to put up with a curacy then Bho might be assistant junior curate. (Laughter.) In another he said: — "I believo one of the reasons why you should have given me all your love in because I have a Bufus-liko head (the defendant has

', red hair, and iB of ruddy complexion), and desire to have a well-read wife." (Eoara of laughter ) The plaintiff waa cross-examined with a view of showing that the engagement had been forced on by herself ; that it had always been understood that they shou'd nob be married till the defendant obtained some preferment j and that the defendant would have fulfilled hiß promise had he not been deterred by the threat of legal proceedings. The first letter by the plaintiff to the defendant before the engagement began, "My darling pet," and concluded with heaps of love and kisses," and the same class of expressions was used through the correspondence, '' Darling Trot," " Tjrottie," and other similar expressions being 'nsed te denote the defendant. He used less familiar terms but wrote a poem of 11 stanzas on a pair of socks sho had made for him, and invariably allowed her to kiss him when he took eff her skates in winter. No evidence waa called for the defence and the jury gave a verdict for .21000 damages.