Notable Breaches of Promise.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 6, 12 August 1905, Page 59

Notable Breaches of Promise.

WHAT BROKEN HEARTS (’OST TO MEND

To Edinburgh belongs the distinction of having been the scene of one of the most noteworthy breach of promise cases on record. Against Mr. D. Maegregor Mrs. Brodie claimed £30,000 damages for an unfulfilled promise to marry, but the jury so far sympathised with the defendant that £5OOO was declared to be ample. Scorning this paltry sum, however, Mrs. Brodie asked for a second trial, after which, to her disgust, the award was reduced to £5OO.

‘‘But,” said her solicitor, "my client's expenses in the matter have been quite £1)00. and 1 appeal for a third trial.” A third trial was, however, promptly refused, and Mrs. Brodie was left to rue not having accepted £5OOO when she had the chance. Restaurant flirtations are so common that waitresses will be glad to hear of at least one case in which a waitress received £BOO damages for breach of promise. She was a Miss Mercer, employed at a Liverpool cafe, the defendant being a business man named Thorburn. It was easily established that the promise had been made, but Mr. Thorburn’s hope of acquittal lay in the fact that Miss Mercer had written to him a letter giving up her claim to become his wife. It was shown, however, that the letter had been written at his own suggestion, and as the jury considered, in consequence, that it did not represent her real feelings in the matter, and was therefore non-commit-tal, Mr. Thorburn’s scheme went “agley. ’ Strange was the story told by Mr. Goldsmid, of Exeter, who suddenly disappeared on the eve of his intended marriage to Miss Henrietta Finch. In the action which followed this interference with the wedding celebrations it was stated that the defendant and his mother had been shadowed by a mysterious woman who threatened to shoot both the bride and the bridegroom. Mrs. Goldsmid was so alarmed that she refused to sanction the marriage; hence her son’s disappearance. Mr. Goldsmid was, however, traced to London, anil although the story of the mysterious woman was told with great dramatic force, it did not save him from being ordered to pay £l5OO damages. It was a simple dressmaker’s bill which was mainly responsible for the action. Miss Ferrers versus Major Dudley Richard Apthorp. The generous major had promised to pay for his sweetheart’s trousseau; but when bills amounting to £lO7 were presented to him he was so astonished and frightened by the prospect of having to meet such bills regularly that he withdrew all his promises, including that of marriage. It came to light in the evidence, too, that the lady had written to him for money when she was holiday-making. This he refused, saying he had never heard of a girl asking her fiancee for money for holidays. Obviously

she would have been a rather expensive wife, but the jury considered this to be no excuse for breaking the promise to marry, and awarded her £1350. Never, perhaps, was a lady more deserving of damages than was Miss Dawes, of Manchester. She was forty-six years old when she brought her action against Mr. Brown, aged fifty-two. The pair had been engaged over twenty-five years; for Mr. Brown could not leave home, he said, till his mother died. His mother lived to be eighty-four, and at last the wedding was fixed Meanwhile, however, Mr. Brown went to America, became engaged there to quite a young woman, and was absolutely rude afterwards to his former fiancee, who had refused four offers of marriage for his sake, had nursed both him and his mother through severe illnesses, and whose faith in his promises of marriage had lasted over a quarter of a century. She was awarded £750 as compensation.

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