EXTRAORDINARY ABDUCTION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3798, 30 April 1891, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY ABDUCTION.

INTERESTING ROMANCE. CONNUBIAL HISTORY OF THE COUPLE. Last Sunday morning (March 8) the congregation attending the Clitheroe Parish Church were thrown into a state of great excitement us they were leaving the church by the appearance of a carriage and pair, from which sprang two gentlemen, who immediately seized a lady named Mrs Jackson, and putting her into t\e carriage by force drove away in the direction of Blackburn. As the carriage was driving through the streets the lady was noticed to be struggling, but no one interfered. There is a considerable amount of romance in the matter. Little more than three years ago Mr E H Jackson fell in love with and married a Miss liall, of Clitheroe, a iady who possessed a fortune of £27,000 in her own right. They were married privately and unknown to the lady's relatives in Blackburn in 1887, and on the very day cf the wedding the bridegroom left his wife, travelled to London, and took ship for New afcland. Early in 1889 he return#H but then Mrs Jackson positively refused to cohabit with him She was then living with her relatives. The same year Mr Jackson obtained an order in the High Court of Justice for the restitution of conjugal rights, hut the wife refused to return to her husband and home, and it was because of this obduracy that she was forcibly abducted on Sundiy morning. It is affirmed that Miss Hall made a marriage settlement of £5 per week on her husband, which, however, he had never been allowed to enjoy. The occupants of the second carriagp. which drove up to the house, were relatives of the wife and their family lawyer, Mr Baldwin. Finding the place barricaded, and the husband determined to oppose an entrance, the lady's relatives became violently excited, threatening all manner of aotion. So numerous did the crowd become, and so heated and excited the many friends of Mrs Jackscn. nil of whom had driven over from Clitheroe, that the Chief Constable brought a posse of police on the scene. Mr Baldwin at first intended to take the house by storm, and had his forces ready, but the Chief Constable warned him if he did so, he would arrest him for breach of the peace. He then demanded that Mrs Jackson be given up, but her husband refused from an open window, an d said he had a force ready to resist. Thus both parties remained all , Sunday night, the husband's on the defensive, and the wife's on the alert to achieve a rescue, it opportunity ' afforded itself. Constables stood in [ front of the house to maintain order. ' Meanwhile Mr Baldwin had obtained

a warrant against Mr Jackson and **his assistant abductors for an assault upon Mrs Jackson's sister, who was present at the time of the capture.