BROKEN ENGAGEMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 August 1933, Page 9

BROKEN ENGAGEMENT

WOMAN AWARDED £4OO. LONDON, July 5. That a defendant made a. definite offer to give a woman half his money if she would consent to release him from his promise to marry her was a conclusion reached by Mr Justice Avory in a case at the Assizes at Kingston yesterday. His lordship gave judgment for £4OO for Miss Mabel Daley against Mr Lome Neville Carr-Dickinson, Homecroft, Ashvale, Surrey, against whom, she had brought an action for breach of promise of marriage. Miss Daley, in her evidence, said that she was a nurse, but was now working in a confectioner’s business at Cove, near Farnborough, riant':. Mr Justice Avory decided the case on the question whether there was a binding contract between the parties that defendant should pay plaintiff £4OO when the engagement was broken off. and said that there was no question of fac ts to be determined by 'the jury, as the breach of promise had been admitted.

Sir John Cameron, for Miss Daley, said that she met Mr Carr-Dickinson, ar. engineer, in October, 1931. when she was nursing his aunt, and they became engaged in December. In October. 1932, Mr Carr-Dickinson wrote complaining of the prevalence of unemployment. The letter added: "If we marry I stipulate no children at all. I cannot guarantee employment. or gnaiantce my life. If anything happens to me it would mean a dog’s life for you and a ■ millstone round your neck. “If you still think of marrying me after my stipulation, enough money must bo saved without spending my shares. If you decide to keep single and would rather not marry, I will hand you half of my highest paying shares which is half my money, so we shall both have something behind us.” Miss Daley replied: “If you think it is better for mo to remain single, as you say it will be a millstone round my neck if I marry you, you apparently do not care for me as much as I thought you did. Therefore, you say you will hand over half of your highest paying shares, which you say is half your money. If you think it is best we should not marry, I will accept your very kind offer of money, and we will part." Sip John said that further in the tamo letter, Mic-s Daley wrote: "It lajas

been a blow to me. If you do not want me, thank God I have still my job to go back to.” In another letter to Miss Daley, Mr Carr-Dickinson wrote that he ha J lost £2OO “over this cursed conversion scheme,” leaving him £BOO, and he wanted her to have £4OO of it.

There was an interview between them on October 26, when defendant said that he made his offer of £4OO in a temper, and was not prepared to carry it out. He made an offer of £.150, but this Miss Daley refused. Miss Daley gave evidence, and was asked by Mr Havers (cross-examin-ing), if she did not know that, apart from about £l,OOO securities, defendant had nothing at all, and was dependent on his mother while unemployed. Miss Daley did not reply, and the judge 1 emarked, “There are a good many people worse off than that.” Defendant said he was unemployed when lie met Miss Daley. At the interview she said, “I have got you cornered over breach of promise,” and he replied, “If that is your attitude, you won’t get anything. You are simply out lor what you can get. We will go on as we are, and, unless something very much out of the way happens, I will marry you in a year or two years’ time.”