FOR BREACH OF PROMISE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4740, 23 August 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOR BREACH OF PROMISE

(By Major Arthur Griffiths.) There is no more bare-faced attempt at imposition on record than that made in 1840 by a young lady who claimed tho performance of a promise of marriage given her, as she alleged by the thou Earl Ferrers. This title, unhappily, is not unknown in criminal annals through the trial and execution of one who bore it, tho third Earl, Lawrence, who, about tho middle of the eighteenth century in a fit of uncontrollable fury, murdered his land agent, and was hanged (see Vol. 11., p. 110). In tho present instance the holder of the title ran a great risk of being victimised by an unscrupulous young person, who built up a strange scheme of fraud, evolved by herself out of her own inventive brain.

Before his accession to the earldom in 1842, on the death of his grandfather. Lord Ferrers, then known as Lord Tamworth, was educated by i private tutor in Warwickshire, in the immediate neighbourhood of Anstey; here lived a respectable family of the iiamo of Smith, whose eldest dauhgter. Mary, was then little more than fifteen. She was possessed of considerable personal attractions, and according to her own story, as subsequently told in court, she early attracted the young lord’s attention. Tho relations between them rapidly grew into warm attachment, and the climax was reached when i proposed to her, and made her a most unequivocal promise of marriage. Some inkling of the romance in progress appears to have reached the ears of her parents, who, realising the difference in the stations of the young lovers, did their best- to put an end to the entanglement. To spate their daughter unhappiness they sent her.away from homo to complete her education in France. In 1840 Lord Tamworth also left England, and remained abroad till a couple of days before tho grandfather's death, which, as has been said, occurred in 1842.

Now. both parties to tho courtship being in England, correspondence was renewed between them. Lord Tamworth, having become Earl Ferrers, was now presumably his own master, and a date was fixed for the marriage. Delays, however, occurred, and it was postponed from time to time until at length a definite fixture was made for August, 1844. The Smiths, at the instance of their daughter, began to prepare for tho marriage, and the trousseau and the bridecake were ordered. Suddenly an announcement was published in the newspapes of Lord Ferrors’s marriage to Miss Chichester, rumour of which had already reached Anstey,_but had been disbelieved by the Smiths. Miss Smith, indeed, continued to produce the most encouraging letters from Lord Ferrers, altogether denying the false reports, and maintaining his honourable intention of fulfilling his promise. When tho aht of final treachery came out tho outraged Smith family appealed to the law for redress. THE CASE IN COURT.

The case came into court on the 14th of February, 1846. when Miss Smith essayed to recover compensation and damages. The defendant put in a complete and positive denial, first contending, through his counsel, chat he was not responsible at the time stated, being then under age. Upon this plaintiff pleaded that the promise had been renewed after his attaining his majority, and the defendant fell back upon his positive denial of the whole occurrence. Miss Smith’s case rested mainly upon letters written to her by Lord Ferrers, which were produced in court, and read aloud. They were lengthy effusions of the most affectionate tenor, in which he opened his heart to her, recounting at great length the details of his daily life in London, his view on politics, news of his family, and miich personal gossip; the whole interspersed witu declarations of his inalterable attachment and his firm belief in their future happiness. Ho referred constantly to the rich presents he had sent her: sometimes he apologised for the absence of a gift, and begged her to buy anything sho pleased at his charge—dresses, jewellery, books —tho bills of all of which she was to send to him. Lord Ferrers was not very prompt m liquidating these engagements, and when Mary Smith gently hinted that sho had run uato debt to the extent of £2OO, ho relied, begging her to borrow the money from her friends for a time until he was in a position to settle 'all claims in full.

There were other letters produced besides Lord Fcrrers’s; one in particular from his brother, the Hon. Devereux Shirley, forwarding a vouchor for a new hat. Lord Ferrers being indisposed. The evidence adduced in corroboration of the correspondence did not amount to much. One or two servants and farm labourers swore that they had mot Miss Smith and Lord Ferrers in company togeuier; a man of low character, who had at one time filled the post of chaplain to Lord Ferrers and had been dismissed as a dissolute person, gave similar evidence, which was little worthy of credence ; and a child-sister of Miss Smith’s stated that she . had seen Lord Ferrers at their house in her sister’s society. On the other hand, both father and mother honestly declared that they had never met the young peer, and had been throughout guided entirely by what their daughter told them, backed by the letters she had shown. They had never asked to see the letters addressed by her to Lord Ferrers, although they had often posted them for their daughter. The parents had noted the arrival of the supposed presents, and had been somewhat surprised to receive the bills for them, and which they had in due course been obliged to pay. A new light was thrown upon the story of the hat alleged to hare been forwarded by the Hon. Devereux Shirley, for the milliner who supplied it deposed that Miss Smith had ordered it herself.

Her mystification of her parents was carried oven further; on one occasion she persuaded them that Lord Ferrers had invited them to pay him a visit at Bangor, and they had travelled there via Stafford, where they had spent a night, and where he was to have met them. But as the faithless peer did not turn up, the family returned home, and no reason was ever furnished for this strange discourtesy. A ctlrious fact was remarked with regard to his lordship’s letters. They never arrived by post, but Miss Smith received them, as she said, from the hands of confidential servants employed by Lord Ferrers. THE DEFENCE. The case for the defence, as has been stated, was a positive denial. Lord Ferrers swore that he had never spoken to Miss Smith in his life—ho had never even seen her. On the day on which the little sister deposed to having met him in the house at Anstey he was lunching with bis sister. Mrs Banbury Tracy, fifty-eight miles from Anstey on the Welshpool road. He stated that

directly after his return from abroad ho had been worried perpetually by anonymous letters in a female hand. The first of these revealed to him that ho had become the object of a violent attachment, and that a very beautiful and fascinating young girl was desperately in love with him. The succeeding letters were from the lovelorn maiden herself, couched in the most affectionate language, imploring Lord Ferrers to reply and to keep various assignations suggested by her. Lord Ferrers had thought so little of these letters that lie had thrown many of them into the fire.

The crucial stage m these proceedings was reached when the letters purporting to have been written by Lord Ferrers were subjected to a critical examination. They were written mostly on strange scraps of paper without monogram or coronet, and in a handwriting which Lord Ferrers denied to bo his. This handwriting, which was now seen, showed an extraordinary similarity to that of Miss Smith. So did that of the letter purporting to have been written ly Devereux Shirley, added to which was the damaging evidence that when this letter was supposed to have been written ho was not by Lis brother’s side, but serving with his regiment in Scotland. Everything pointed to forgery' of thb most barefaced and palpable kind, aud this -intention was .supported by the evidence of members of the Ferrers family, who not only denied the handwriting, but swore positively to the falsehoods, of their contents. Now, in fact, the ■ whole fraud became apparent, and on the fourth day of the trial the Solicitor-General, who was Miss Smith’s counsel, openly withdrew from the case. A non-suit was accordingly entered, and the letters were impounded to form the basis of an indictment against Miss Smith. But the charge was never proceeded with, and the case remains as a record of the criminal lengths to which a misguided girl may go in the pursuit of her foolish dreams. It was evident that Miss Smith had evolved the whole plot i y herself, and that neither her father nor her mother had any idea but that she was acting in good faith. She was only 21 at the time of the trial, and all her life had been lived iu her home, with the exception of the year or so that she spent finishing her education in London and Paris.