A LITIGIOUS FAMILY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2508, 27 May 1893, Page 3

A LITIGIOUS FAMILY.

A divorce suit—M‘Kerrow v. M‘Kerow—involving some novel horrors, is before the court this week (writes the London correspondent of the Argus on April 24). One of the females of the Lotinga family is proceeding in person against her husband, and she has made four or five married women co-respon-dents. There is nothing to prevent a vindictive or a suspicious woman dragging the names of every one of her female acquaintances into a suit of this kind. The petitioner in this case comes of a litigious family, and her mother is already famous in the law courts as the heroine of a great insurance case. In the year 3 884 an old Hebrew shipping broker, somewhere in the North of England, by name Loiiuga, died, there being a large insurance on his life. The company, however, disputed the claim on the grounds that Lotinga, when applying for the policy, had concealed from the company’s medical officer the fact that he, the insurer, was a habitual drunkard. It was proved at the trial that old Lotinga’s regular allowance of spirits was 24 half-glasses of whiskey per diem. The claim was tried twice, distinguished counsel being employed for the Lotinga family, but the juries disagreed. Haying finally spent all her money, Mrs Lotiuga determined to plead her own cause at the third trial. She obtained the verdict in her favor. On tho strength of this remarkable case, one of tho counsel in crossexamining Mrs McKerrow this week, rather wittily alluded to old Mrs Lotinga as “ your learned mother.” It was proved in the insurance case that Mrs M'Kerow, while still under age, was a money-lender, or gombeen girl, on her own account. Afterwards the family moved to Boulogne and set up as advertising bookmakers beyond the range of our betting acts. M'Korrow seems to have been a handsome, presentable scapegrace, who was run after by a raffish set of women just hovering on the borders of second-class society at Brighton, The name of a Melbourne }.ady was dragged in also without a scrap of evidence to justify it.' Sir Francis Jeune has dismissed the case against her with costs, remarking that there was not a shadow of foundation for the cruel charge.