JEALOUS AT 90.

Patea Mail, Volume XXIX, 29 November 1907, Page 2

JEALOUS AT 90.

A VILLAGE ROMANCE,

A strange assault case, arising out of jealousy, was heard by Mr Justice Grantham at Cambridge Assizes. The .accused was John Tolliday, an agricultural labourer, who has reached the mature age of seventy-four, and the prosecutor was Thomas Wakefield, who is sixteen years his senior. The parties live in the village of Imping--ton, and, .according to the evidence, quarreled over a female neighbour named Smith. The latter is forty-six years old.

When Smith’s father was alive Wakefield was a welcome guest at the Smiths’ fireside. The two old men were about the same age, and they loved to talk over the “ good old times.” But after Mr Smith’s death, his daughter, who had always tlaeif friendly with Tolliday, asked Wakefield to discontinue his visits. But he refused to do so, and, it was said, when Miss Smith began to lock her cottage door the old man started to call Tolliday nick-names. At last, according to the evidence, the latter lost his temper, ran after his tormen* tor, snatched his stick away, and beat him so severely with it that he broke the elder man’s arm and inflicted a number of wounds.

Wakefield, a sharp-eyed, alert, little man, told the story of the assault with wonderful clearness. The accused, he said, “ splashed away at him as if he was knocking.a bit of wood about.”

Tolliday was sentenced to three, months’ imprisonment.