MISS SLADE'S LOVE-LETTERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5215, 8 December 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

MISS SLADE'S LOVE-LETTERS.

(From the York Herald, October 1.)

Love-letters. are occasionally found very profitable to the penny-a-liner when produced in court at the hearing.of a breach of promise case, but it is not often that they are expected to produce such large profits as were anticipated by two enterprising individuals who have just met with their deserts at the hands of Mr. Justice Hawkins in the Central Criminal Court. Mi3s Augusta Ernestine Slade, who is a young lady of good connection, happened some years back to be travelling in Turkey; and at Constantinople she met with one Constantine Theodorides, a Greek, a man, as we may suppose, of good address and not without " expectations," as a matrimonial engagement was in time made up between him and Miss Slade. However, in the year 1875, the match was for some reason broken off, and the public ruight never have heard of it, but for certain circumstances which afterwards occurred. During the courtship, as a matter of course, letters very frequently passed between the young couple, and equally as a matter of course when the love-making came to an end the lady required the return of her letters. Here the knavery of Theodorides showed itself. It is, however, but just to him to say that in the interval between his first meeting with Miss Slade and the breaking off of their courtship, he had, as it appears, lost his position as a merchant, and that his financial affairs had got into very low water. Well, the demand for the letters having been made, the fellow puts off the la'dy with various excuses, until meeting her in London he devised and told her the story that an Italian named Pablo Golera (the second defendant) had seized the box containing the letters as a security for a debt he owed him (Golera), and that he would not give them up unless £SOO were paid him. In a subsequent interview the Greek actually sold back to the lady for a consideration' of £2O some forty of her letters, which he professed were all he then retained. The next step is th*t Golera writes a letter to the lady's friends, threatening publication of the correspondence unless £SOO should be paid him ; then a friend of the family, a barrister, is consulted ; and finally the prisoners are brought to justice. They have been sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. The case is happily of a nature which is quite exceptional in this country, and we are fain to believe that such a plan of raising money would hardly have suggested itself to an Englishman moving in the same rank in life as the prisoners.