A QUEER CASE.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 669, 3 May 1870, Page 4

A QUEER CASE.

In the Divorce Court, on the 11th and 13th February, the petition of a Mr Jones against his, wife and four co-respondents was heardl' The petitioner, Gilbert Pickering Jones, is a captain in a militia regiment, and in January, 1865, while he was residing with his parents at Jersey, he accidentally made the acquaintance of the respondent in the streets of St. Helier's. She represented that she was the widow of an officer in the army, and after a short acquaintance she induced him to sign a promise to marry her. When his family heard of the engagement they tried to break it off, but he renewed his promise, and they were ultimately, on the 6th of November, 1865, married clandestinely at the registrar's office at Guernsey. He continued with his parents, upon whom

he was then dependent, and only cohabited occasionally with respondent. She represented at first that she was in receipt of a pension, and then that she had an allowance from the brother of her first husband, and she did not appear to have been supported by Captain Jones. In 1866 and the early part of .1867 she was living in lodgings at Exeter, where Captain Jones occasionally visited her. His father died in March, 1867, and by that time his suspicions as to the truth of the history which she had given of herself were aroused, and he refused to cohabit with her until she was able to remove them. Further inquiries were made by his friends, and it was at last ascertained that previously to her marriage she had lived with aMr Hamilton Ross. Captain Jones had never seen this gentleman, but Mrs Jones had frequently mentioned him, and described him as her guardian. Mrs Jones was charged with having committed adultery with Mr Ross, who is in a mercantile house in the City, on an occasion when he visited her at Exeter in tho summer of 1867, and damages were claimed against him. Mr Ross, who is now married, pleaded a denial of the charge, and Mr H. Jones stated on his behalf that he intended to pledge his oath to that denial in the witness-box. Mrs Jones was also charged with having Jived with some other man as his wife at lodgings at Starcross for a week in the summer of 1867 ; and also with having since that time formed an improper intimacy with the other co-respondent, Mr Myers, a retired tailor, in whose house at Exeter she had for some *ime lodged. Mrs Jones pleaded a denial of all the charges against her, and Myers also denied the charge. Captain Jones, the petitioner, was examined in support of his own case, and caused a good deal of amusement by the manner in which he gave his evidence. He seemed to have given entire credit to the different tales told him at different times by his wife, and from the beginning to the end of his connection with her to have acted like a person without the slightest experience of life. The jury, after deliberating for about an hour, found that the respondent had committed adultery with the co-respoadents Smith and Myers ; but, being unable to agree, were discharged from returning a verdict on the issue whether the. petitioner had separated from the respondent without reasonable cause, and the court, for the present, suspends its decree.