A Sensational Divorce Case.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 212, 11 March 1896, Page 2

A Sensational Divorce Case.

(Per Press Association.) Sydney, March 9. The sensation of the hour is the Schofield divorce case. Schofield, who was a, clerk in the Joint Stock Bank, I came to the colony from England, partly for his health, and partly to seek employment, leaving a young wife bebind him until he got settled. Mrs Schofield wrote several letters, in one of which she intimated that she would reach the colony on a certain date. She never came, however, and a subsequent letter was received, in which she addressed her husband in a formal manner, and said she would ignore him if he returned to England. The letter seeks a divorce on the ground ef desertion. After hearing the evidence the judge reserved. his dpcision. Then a curious thing happened. A number of letters, some of them anonymous, reaohed the jadge, and were said to be due to the publicity given to the details of the evidence in the press. These letters as the Judge remarked, contained allegations which, if true, would cause the Court to stay its hand to prevent an abuse of its processes. It had occurred to him. that something must have happened to change the respondent from the affectionate wife she apparently was into the woman she was when she wrote her formal letter, as bitter a letter as he had ever 'read in Court or anywhere else. The Judge particularly asked the petitioner whether he had formed an attachment in the colonies and Schofield emphatically denied. After adjourning the case more letters came to the Judge expressing exactly opposite statements confirmed in the first letters. The matter has been postponed till next week When the Schofield divorce case came before the Court again, conclusive evidence was again adduced to show that petitioner had been living at Watson's Bay with a lady who posed as his wife. The judge remarked the Court had been grossly imposed on, and, but for publication of the. evidence of the previous hearing in the newspapers, it would have, in all probability, been a great miscarriage of justice.