THE ROAD OF THE TRANSGRESSOR.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2517, 14 April 1881, Page 2

THE ROAD OF THE TRANSGRESSOR.

A SOCIAL PB-UIA. Some disclosure just made in the Dunedin Police Court afford a varied illustration of the truth of the ancient saying about the hardness of the transgressor’s path. About three or four years ago a medical practitioner, named Bakewell, took up his abode in Moray place, Dunedin. Dr Bakewell had a wife and flourishing family, and having the “gift of the gab” he endeavored by his exemplary behavior, attending strictly to divine worship, and mounting the Sunday School platform occasionally to ingratiate himself with the “ unco guid ” for which Dunedin lias a world-wide celebrity. Dr Bakewell, in his earlier years, had followed the army and he was never tired of giving his “ Reminiscences of the Crimea ” for religious and charitable purposes. The lecture consisted principally of hospital incidents, and its greatest blemish was an ungallant, scurrilous, and unmanly attack which the surgical lecturer was addicted to making on Miss Nightingale because she did not come up to his standard of female loveliness. By-and-bye Dr Bakewell found it convenient to remove Mrs Bakewell and family to a distant part of the colony for a change of air, and about the same time a young married woman named Macpherson, tailing into delicate health, was induced to leave her husband and take up her abode in the home of her medical adviser. The husband, a decent, industrious, and in every way respectable man endeavored to bring his erring wife to reason ;1 friends and even the pastor of Knox Church were employed to interview the back-slider, but all in yain. Driven to desperation McPherson caught the gay Lothario in Princes street one day, followed him to his own doorstep, and the valiant medico, who, according to his own account, had laid low many a Russian, measured his length in the gutter, just as a tall policeman, who witnessed the exploit, made his way from the scene through a back yard. The scandal travelled like wildfire, Dr Bakcwell’s practice vanished, and, worse luck, Mrs Bakewell and all the other Bakcwells returned from their pilgrimage. Since then Dr Bakewell has been leading a roving life, more romantic than pleasant, visiting the West Coast of New Zealand, and finally sailing for New South Wales, the unfortunate but infatuated woman whom he ruined pursuing him like his evil destiny, airs M’Plterson has now returned to Dunedin, ill in health, suffering as it is represented from consumption, and on Tuesday she summoned her much wronged husband to the Police Court for leaving her without adequate support. Overwhelming evidence, including that of the Rev Dr Stuart and Dr Brown, proved that the boot was on the opposite leg—that instead of the husband forsaking the wife it was a case of the wife leaving her husband, and returning only when she was ruined in every sense of the term. The Bench under the circumstances declined to make any order.