Page 2 Advertisements Column 4

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 693, 20 July 1882, Page 2

A Lady’s Claim. —It is by no means an uncommon occurrence at Home nowadays for parties to an action to conduct their cases in person, and the practice is by no means confined to male litigants. In a recent instance, where an action was brought by a lady against the Eight Hon. VV. H. Smith, the First Lord of the Admiralty in the last Conservative Administration, for alleged improper detention of certain securities and documents referring to her income and sanity, for not handing them back to her on his going out of office, and for libel, the plaintiff had apparently prepared the pleadings herself in addition to coming into Court to support them in person. Her claim was certainly unique. It ran as follows : “ The plaintiff claims L 40,000 and all legal expenses and outstanding debts paid, and pawntickets redeemed, a public apology, and all libels contradicted in all the public newspapers (foreign, domestic, and English), and the committal of those who slandered and libelled her, and forged and lithographed her name to Newgate for life, with twenty strokes of the cat-o’-nino tails on the back of each person.”