HOUSE-STORMING EXTRAORDINARY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1666, 3 February 1904, Page 19

HOUSE-STORMING EXTRAORDINARY

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, December 18.

I sing of arms, and the woman —an epic from unromantic Southport. The days of the Amazons are not yet past, it seems. Mrs Woodiwiss, a young widow, lot her furnished house at Bxrkdale, Southport to Mr and Mrs Ramsay, for a term of three years; but at tiie end of a year she deordefi to turn her tenants out. and this is how she did it. She went to the house, said she Pad come to take possession, and told the servants, who had formerly been her own. that they were her servants from that moment. Then she bade them go and tell Mrs Ramsay that she and the children must bo out by 8.30 that night, anti if they were not she would starvo them cut. Sho locked the doors and brought two men into the boose. Next day, when Mr Ramsay oamo irbm London. he found the door iockpl against him. and thereupon he procured four moil to eject the intruders. Mrs Woouiwiss and the men were driven out by force, but that did not daunt the widow. She promptly engaged the services of a number of men to batter in the doors of the house with a. p ank, 'and in this manner the storming party ■effected an entrance by the hack door. Mr Ramsay held them at bay with a revolver. but eventually, for the sake of his wife’s health, he yielded to “force lnajeuro,” and gave up the tenancy. He and his wife brought an- act on, however, against the widow for damages for tresspass and assault, and! the case was heard this week at the Liverpool Assizes. The widow conducted her own defence, and counterclaimed lor injury to furniture through the alleged default of the pla .ntiffs. Mr Justice Jelf, an summing-up, said that some two thousand years ago a great Roman, poet eaiied attention to the length to which a woman might go when she was in a fury of passion, hi this instance :t was the more extraordinary as the defendant was a lady of education and ability, and had conducted this case from first to last with perfect propriety. Yet, on the admitted facts, sho had committed an attack upon the property of another person so outrageous as to be unpredecented in Bi itain. She had absolutely no right to force herself into the house. It was very difficult to believe that they were not reading a romance when dealing with these things. The defendant was like an Amazon in command cf ths charging party, and what was the position of the garrison. It reminded some of them of the fights described by Sir Walter Scott or other great novelists. They found the master of the house standing on the stairs with two womanknd before him, doing his best to prevent what might at any moment become a matter of life and death. • There was no doubt in the world that if anybody had been spitefully inclined towards this woman, she might have stood in the dock on a ■charge of criminal attack upon the house, but not one single step seemed to have been taken to bring the matter to the notice of the Magistrates. Ho thought this was a most extraordinary thing, and he felt that the authorities of Jiirkdale ought to have a strict inquiry into the conduct of the police. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs on the claim for Mrs Ramsay of £SOO. and Mr Ramsay £l5O, and on the counterclaim a verdict for the defendant, awarding her £25 damages to the house and £lO to the furniture.