CURIOUS EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY.

North Otago Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 7197, 28 July 1891, Page 4

CURIOUS EVIDENCE OF IDENTI TY.

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charges in the petition. He should certainly have felt a difficulty in finding desertion before 1886; but as in that year the respondent took up with another woman and passed under * oame other than his own, there wa« evldenoe to establish desertion front that time. As to identity, the evidence was oomptex and peouliar, bat he was not certain that the ordinary evidence in support of Identification was always the best. In this oaae not only was there testimony that the person who at Brisbane called himself Walton wrote the documents Mrs Drew identified aa being in the handwriting of her husband, but the oertificate of birth contained particular! wbioh oould hardly have b«en known to any man other than the respondent, unless they had been fraudulently obtained. In these ciroumstanoea there would be a deoree nisi with OOStBj

In the Divorce Court, London, before Justice Jeunc, Kate Lovell Drew, whose maiden names was Meadows, petitioned for the dissolution of her marriage with Nias James Drew, on the ground o* his desertion and adultery. ! This was a curious, and, in one respect, a perhaps unprecedented case. The alleged desertion was reiuai liable in its cucumstances ; the evidence of the alleged adultery was quite out| of the common; and that ot identity was confined to the production of h ndwriting and a photograph, which were sworn to be those of the respondent, Tho evidenco of tho petitioner — the only witness examined at tho tiial — was directed to showing that she and the respondent were married on Apiil 15th, 1875, at St. John's, King-ston-on-Thames; that at the end ot the same year twins wore born of tho marriage, one of whom died not long after its birth ; and that tho lespon-dt-nt, who hud given way to intemperate habits, left her in June, 1877, :ind had never nfterwaids lotumcd to her or contributed to her support. The witness identified as in her husband's handwriting a birth certificate, of which a photographed copy was produced in Court, entries on two leaves of an account book, and tho ditection on an envelope. Mie said that previously to June, 1887, there was a temporal y separation of heiself and her husband because of his intemperate habits lie was a hosier at tho time fiho marrjed, him but, haviug spent his money, he sold out their house. After a short separation, dur ing which she lived with her mother, she agreed io return to her husband, and they went into lodgings, but in June, 1877, ho left lior, and since then she had provided for herself and her child by her earnings as an operatic and comic singer. Iu 1886 she went on a professional engagement to A us. tialm, and made encjuiriea about her husband. She had engagements in Australia and Kew Zealand for a considerable time, and did not roiurn to England till last year. In 1888 she obtained tho information on which this .suit was brought, but she never saw her husband in Australia. In the proper office at Brisbane she saw the birth certificate, of which a photographed copy was in court. That certificate was entirely in the handwriting of her husband and was one of tho birth of a child born to him on March 6. 1887, at that place. Mr Deonne put ir evidence nn official copy of Ihe birth certificate, and called his Lordship's attention to these ciicumstances in connection with it — that in it the person who signed as father signed in the names of JNias James Drew, which were those of tho respondent; described the mother of the child as his wife, whose maiden name was Rose Critrhlcy ; stated that previously to the child born on March 6, 1887. and whom he registered ns Victor Charles, there had been issue of his marriage two children, one of whom was dead and the other, Albeit James Somerset, was surviving ; that the date of his marriage with Rose Critchley was April 15, 1875; and and that it was celebrated at St. Thomas's, Kingston-on-Thamcs. All these particulars, with the exception of the names of his wife and the statemen' that the child bom on March 6, 1887, at Biisbane was a child of the marriage, woie true. Mr Jus'ice Jeuno thought that, on the whole, the evidence sustained tho

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