GISBORNE SOCIETY SCANDAL

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2741, 5 June 1924, Page 2

GISBORNE SOCIETY SCANDAL

COLD-BLOODED BARGAINING

Gisborne. .May 3.1

Unusual features and allegations characterised the Magistrate's Court proceedings when Helen Marjorie Dunlop sued Eergus Gale Dunlop for maintenance. Both parties are figures of much social standing in Gisborne and the defendant, until recently, was a solicitor practicing in ibis town. ■Complainant alleged persistent cruelly, habitual (liunkeness ;ni<l failure to maintain. In support of the drunkenness claim < omplainant alleged defendant onnie home from a parly one night wit 1 1 iln- word ‘‘stunned" written aeross his shirt front and all the men

i,ud women at the party had signed their names on the shirt f ront. Defendant admitted tin* incident, but denied drunkenness on the occasion. Defendant alleged that a man who was called in court ‘‘Mt X" and who i> a married man also wellknowii in social circles in Gisborne, cairn to the house with complainant in I lie absence of defendant. Defendant alleged that why bis wife left home was her infatuation' for ‘‘Mr X."

In. his judgment, tin* Magistrate* said there had undoubtedly been for some lime an absolute hick of martial reciprocity and indifference to cadi other which grew rather than diminished and when it culminated in this position that a man and it woman discussed and liargained with a third party who was known by “Mr X" the last-named could on)y he called Hie purchaser (if the woman, who was to be freed by divorce and subsequent marriage. “I can only characterise this proposition as cold-blooded 'bargaining, as it seems to have been dismissed and canvassed between both parties on it number of occasions until at length tentative arrangements seem to have been arrived at. However, the arrangements proved fruitless and matters went from bad to worse until the break mime.” The Magistrate also commented on Hie dispassionate aln,d impersonal manner in which complainant gave evidence. Orders wore granted as asked for, with limintonanoe-at £9 weekly.