BREACH OF PROMISE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21133, 16 March 1932, Page 13

BREACH OF PROMISE.

CLAIM BY ART MISTRESS. £ISOO DAMAGES AWARDED. NEW ZEALANDER AS DEFENDANT UNCONTESTED CASE IN LONDON. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON, Feb. 11. Without leaving the box, the jury in the King's Bench Division yesterday awarded £ISOO and costs to the plaintiff in tho action for breach of promise of marriage, Wrench v. Walker. The case came before Mr. Justice Avory. The action was brought by Miss Ethelwyn Holbrook Wrench, of Raven,shall, Betley, Staffordshire, against Thomas Henry Walker, an engineer pattern maker, of Napier, New Zealand. The defendant was not present and was not represented. Counsel for Miss Wrench, in opening the case, said that the plaintiff had been left in the lurch by defendant without a word of explanation. In 1926 Miss Wrench left England to take up the post of art mistress at the Girls' High School in Napier, New Zealand, at a salary of £240 a year, with board and lodging. She also had an income of £4O a year from private pupils. In 1928 she met the defendant, who fell in love with her, or pretended to do so, for at the end of July, 1928, he proposed marriage and she accepted him. Walßer told plaintiff that he had succeeded in saving a good deal of money, which was obviously the fact judging from his income-tax return, which the plaintiff saw. Tho arrangement was that Miss Wrench was to return to England at the end of her three years' engagement at, tho school and the defendant was to follow her. Tho marriage was to take place on his arrival in this country. Although the plaintiff wrote to tho defendant on her reaching England she had never heard from him from that day to this. The writ in the action was issued in July. 1930, and in his defence Walker denied the promise and pleaded that if he did mako it reasonable time for fulfilling it had not elapsed. The Plaintiff's Story. The plaintiff, giving evidence, said that the defendant gave her an engagement ring in May, 1929. She returned to England in February, 1930, and the defendant was to follow her in April. The marriage was to tako place at the parish church at Betley, near Crewe. She could have remained at the school in Napier after her three years there, but did not do so because of the impending marriage. The defendant told her that he had enough money for them to live comfortably in the country with an occasional visit to town, that he would buy a house costing £2OOO or £3OOO, that they would run a motor car, and that if it was too cold in England they would winter abroad. Tho governors of the school tried to persuade Miss Wrench to stay, but she came to England in February, 1930. Walker was to follow, after paying a flying visit to his brother in Australia. From the moment she left New Zealand Miss Wrench had not heard a word from Mr. Walker. Counsel: Ho had not even tho common decency to write to say he had changed lii.s mi rid.

After being unemployed for some time Miss Wrench got a temporary post at £125 a year. Miss Wrench said that in one of his letters while they were in New Zealand defendant wrote:—" To mo it seemed the beginning of a new era. You brought a newness, a freshness, and a breath from Old England. You have made my scheme of things so much easier. You are English, and all I desire if you. We love'the same things. You have the artistic temperament-, which has ever appealed to me, and in you I hope to find a great happiness. . . . You are never out of my thoughts, and I long very much for your return." " It Was a Lover's Knot." Iu another letter Walker wrote:—"You must know how dear you have become to me. You are ever in my thoughts. You have changed my outlook upon life's future entirely. [ can imagine all kinds of beautiful thoughts with you as the central figure always. You have become the incentive that leads me now to make ready for that wonderful life that is to be ours together in the homeland. What a change you have, made in me. Surely it was a lover's knot I tied around your waist that first Sunday night wo were together." Mr. Justice Avory, in summing up, said that, whenever such a promise as was alleged in the case was made, the law implied, in the absence of anv special agreement, that it would be carried out within a reasonable time. The jury would probably find that a reasonable iime had elapsed, and when the defendant did not come to England as arranged, gayo no excuse for not coming and fulfilling his promise, and did not take the trouble to be represented in Court or attend to make any answer to the claim, I hey would probably bo satisfied that the plaintiff had made out her case and was entitled to recover damages.