"HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHER."

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2218, 25 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

"HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHER."

On Friday, at the Dublin Law Courts, the Registrar of the Common Pleas division sat with a jury of six to assess the damages in an action for breach of promise to marry. The plaintiff was Margaret McKee, and the defendant Bernard Lafferty, of Co. Monaghan, from whom £500 damaces were claimed. The plaintiff, a girl 18 years of age, said the match was arranged by friends, and she met the defendant, who was a farmer, at a fair. Subsequently the latter agreed to marry her on receiving £100 fortune from her father. The wedding-dress was procured, friends invited, and a priest engaged, when defendant's sister prayed to have the match broken off, as another girl had become distracted on (earning that defendant was to marry the plaintiff. The plaintiff cried, and her father laid £100 down on the table to induce defendant to keep his promise ; bub he refused, and married the distracted girl, a Miss Flanagan. The woddin«-ring bought for the plaintiff was now worn by the latter. — Counsel for defendant said there was neither romance nor love in the case, and it was purely a matter of money. — The jury awarded plaintiff £120 damages.