BREACH OF PROMISE CASE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1072, 11 May 1882, Page 4

BREACH OF PROMISE CASE.

We extract the following from a London daily: — The case of Matthews v. Miller came before Mr Justice Denman, at the Surrey Assizes, on Wednesday. Plaintiff, 22, is the daughter of an ironmonger in the Borough, and defendant was a widower, aged 36, a buyer of •skins, at Bermondsey. The parties formed an acquaintance at the railway station, which ended in plaintiff being invited to defendant’s house. This she accepted, and in the course of the evening of December 27, 1880, he succeeded in seducing her under the promise of marriage. In the month of February defendant sent her a letter pointing out the disparity in their ages, and wishing to terminate the engagement. The plaintiff was delivered of * child in September, and hence the action. Defendant had since married another woman. In the course of cross-examination plaintiff said the defendant told her upon one occasion that he thought he was too old for her, and that the acquaintance had better cease. She knew a young man named Thergood, and had frequently seen him at his mother’s house, but not in June, 1880. She remembered a party being given by his mother in August, 1880. Thergood was sitting in an easy chair, and she might have gone and sat on his lap. She always looked on him as a brother, and she might have sat on his lap for ten minutes, but she did not fondle him. Thergood was missed all at ouce, and they said he had gone to bed. She went into his bedroom, but his cousin and several other people were present. He was lying in bed

undressed, and she might have kissed him once. She would swear that she did not fondle him. Plaintiff, in reply to questions, said she was thrown upon Thergood’s bed, but she swore that she was never in the bed with Thergood. Several ladies were in the room, but she did not hear any one say, You are not wanted now,” and they did not all go out of the room, leaving her and Thergood alone. The party was kept up all night, and what she , had referred to did not occur until I seven in the morning. She continued to visit Thergood at his mother’s house after this had happened. The defendant told her that he had heard that Thergood could do almost what he liked with her. Thergood went to bed about three o’clock in the morning, and a cry was raised that his bedroom door was open about seven o’clock, and witness and several others of the party •vent up to the room. She could not say which of the party did it, but three or four of them laid hold of her and threw’ her on Thergood’s bed in a joke. She laid on the bed for a few minutes, and then got off. Thergood’s mother was in the room all the time. Several witnesses who were present at the “ party ” referred to by the plaintiff in her evidence, which took place at the residence of the mother of the young man Thergood in August, 1880, were then examined, buttheir evidence merely bore out what she herself stated took place in the bedroom of the young man. At this time it appeared he and the plaintiff were looked upon as lovers, and the affair was looked upon as a joke. One of the witnesses stated that the plaintiff was put into the bed with Thergood with her clothes on, and she was “ tucked up,” and left in that condition. The jury found for the defendant.