JUSTICE TO WOMEN.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1980, 10 May 1875, Page 3

JUSTICE TO WOMEN.

The Sheffield Daily Telegraph has the following onw" Justice to "Women: " — " Justice to .women" is the cry which the shrieking sisterhood raise, but there are : grounds for believing that in a good many legal cases justice would be the very last thing they would appreciate. To take tho matter of breach of promise cases. This day week we reported a case in which a middle-aged farmer sued a lady, also of middle age, for breaking a contract to marry, into which, there was reason to believe, she had entered at her own request. It was clearly shown that tile plaintiff had suffered very substantial loss —not merely of the lady but of the property, and there could be no sort of plea that the engagement had been entered into by the defendant in any other than the most deliberate fashion. The jury were bound to find a verdict for the plaintiff, but they made it practically valueless ;by giving only £5 costs. On the whole, this decision was not to be much regretted, and nothing else could have been expected of a jury under the direction of a Judge so sentimental in his ideas of these matters as Mr Justice Brett. But when we compare it with the verdicts given in cases where the woman is the plain tiff the inequality is sufficiently, obvioua. Take the case reported to-day, in which Rosina Wormleighton claimed £1000. damages, because a partially recovered lunatic with whom she had .been acquainted for only a few months, acting on the adviceof his relations and medical advisers, declined to carry out an engagement to marry heririto which he had rashly entered. In this case the jury assessed the damages at £600. When we remember that the loss of the lady was estimated last week at five guineas, we are able to judge of the relative value of the sexes in the eyes of a British jury. When as solatium for the loss of a promised wife a gentleman is awarded a sum hardly sufficient to buy a decent housedog, while on the other hand a lady is awarded six hundred pounds as compensation for the faithlessness of a harebrained lover, the ladies may well complain that they do not get equal justice; Such a mode of valuation is simply an insult to the sex.