HUSBAND VISITOR

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 May 1941, Page 5

HUSBAND VISITOR

' WIFE’S SLANDER CLAIM FAILS LONDON, March 27. The slander action brought by Mrs. Bettina Rosina Morris, costumier, against Cumberland Hotel Ltd., Sher-wood-street, W., ended before Mr. Justice Tucker in the King’s Bench Division, with judgment lor the hotel with costs.

Mrs. Morris complained that when she was being visited by her husband at the hotel where she had been living, words were used by the hotel’s inquiry superintendent which she alleged/suggested that she was unchaste.

Mr. Justice Tucker said he was satisfied that not a living soul other than the husband heard what was said by the inquiry superintendent to Mrs. Morris in the bedroom. The hotel had a rule that where members of opposite sex met in single bedrooms the door should be left ajar. The inquiry superintendent, Mr. Britton, said he went to Mrs. Morris’s room to point out the rule. “I have come to the conclusion,” said the judge, “that Mr. Morris got very angry the moment Mr. Britton revealed the object of his visit to the bedroom. I have a certain amount of sympathy with the husband’s point of view, and I quite appreciate that he might have regarded the mere fact of the inquiry as casting some reflection on himself or his wife.”

As only Mr. Morris could have heard the slander complained of, it was difficult tq see how the wife’s reputation could have suffered.