Typist Receives £l600 in Breach of Promise Suit

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6901, 6 May 1929, Page 4

Typist Receives £l6oo in Breach of Promise Suit

AM AGES of £1,600 for breach of promise were awarded to a girl Civil servant in the King’s Bench Division at London recently. She was Miss Mary Nicol, 34, a typist, of Eastcome Avenue, Charlton. She sued Mr. Ernest Boond, 30, who lives in the same road, and is an accountant in the Air Ministry. Mr. Boond, cross-examined by Mr. Elliot Gorst, said he had been fond of Miss Nicol. As to the letters which it was suggested should be destroyed by Miss Nicol and himself when on a holiday in Cornwall, it was false to say that they were destroyed on that particular occasion. Mr. Gorst: Did you go to the Fortythree Club? —Yes.

Witness agreed that he asked Miss Nicol to return the photograph he had sent her from Bagdad. He had burned all her letters. Mr. Justice Swift: From 1921 to August, 1924, you were constantly in Miss Nicol’s company, and 12 months later you became engaged to her. When did you begin to lose respect for her?

Mr. Boond: About two months after T came back. I tried to overcome my feelings, as I thought I was not playing the game.

With the disappearance of respect, there was a disappearance of love? — Automatically.

And on May 1 you finally ceased to love her? —That was when it came to a climax.

Mr. Justice Swift, summing up, said there were different views as to actions for damages for breach of promise of marriage. Some people thought the engagement before marriage should be purely a period of probation, in which the parties should get to know each other better, and from which either party should be entitled to withdraw.

Cruel Conduct

There were other people who thought that if such a period of probation was desired, it should be during the informal stage of walking out or of informal engagement. The jury were’ there to give the parties their right under the law, and it would be very wrong if they allowed their individual ideas to affect the law. There could be no pure and legitimate love for a woman for whom a man had no respect. It must have been a terrible shock for Miss Nicol to be told that Mr. Boond was not going on with the engagement, as he was “fed up.”

The case assumed a much more serious aspect than a mere question of breach of contract because of the allegations which Mr. Boond had made. His conduct was cruel in the extreme if his allegations were untrue.

If the jury found for Miss Nicol, they would be justified in considering not only damages for the broken contract, but to remember the allegations Mr. Boond had made.