AMOROUS CONSTABLE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3592, 3 August 1912, Page 4

AMOROUS CONSTABLE.

FIGURES IN BREACH OF PROMISE CASE.

Ail amusing letter written by an amorous police constable to a domestic servant was read at Devon Assizes, when Miss Buckingham, aged 24, was awarded £2O damages against P.C. Staddon for broach of promise. They started walking out m June, 1910, and the following September defendant wrote a letter in which he addressed her as “Dear Susie,” and avowed his love. He said lie had long struggled with his feelings, and had been oppressed with, a passion which had entirely superseded every other feeling. That passion was love for her. Miss Buckingham. In vain he had tried to drive tbe idea from his mind by every art that be could possibly think of. In vain had he sought out every amusement that it might have the tendency to relieve his mind from the passion which it had taken upon itself.

“But love,” he went on, “has taken that firm hold of my whole soul that 1 am unable to entertain but one idea, and that is always yourself. I neglect myself and my duty, and can neither see nor hear one thing, hut that you can bear the chief part therein. Believe me, dearest, lam sincere when T say I feel it is totally impossible to live apart from you. “When with you I am in Paradise—(laughter)—lll)oll absent 1 1 feel in torment. This, I assure you, is a true description of the feeling with which my breast is continually agitated, and it remains only for you to give a reality to those hopes or at once to crush them by a simple word. Say but that one word, and I am the happiest or the most miserable man on earth —Yours till death, H- St-addon.”

At the end of that letter, by a sundry collection of crosses symbolic of kisses, he traced the word “Love.” The couple subsequently became engaged, but in tho early part of this year they parted. Plaintiff’s version was that defendant cooled towards her after seeing Miss Staddon (a lady of the same name as defendant, but no relation), to whom he had been formerly engaged. She caught him walking out with his old love one Sunday night, and a scene ensued. Defendant ‘declared she dismissed him.