The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-05-29 00:00:00

AN AMUSING BREACH OF PROMISE
CASE.

In the Middlesex Sheriff's Court, before Mr. Under-
Sheriff Burchell and a common jury, the case of
Milcion v. Binstead was heard, it having been remit-
ted from the Queen's Bench Division of the High
Court of Justice for the purpose of assessin2 the
amount of damages, if any, to which the plaintiff was
entitled, the defendant having allowed judgment to
go by default. Mr. Montague Druitt, who was
counsel for the plaintiff, said that this was an action
for recovery of damages for a. breach of. promise of
marriage. His client, Miss Marion Mildon, when
she first made the acquaintance of the defendant was
. _ . _ . _

a lady's maid in the service of a titled family near
Se'borne, and the defendant was employed as a
_

draper's assistant in a neighbouring ton. In Sep-
tember, 188:3, he was walking out one evening, and
she met the defendant, who seemed fascinated by her
good looks, and he asked her if she would allow him
to accompany her for a short distance. She assented,
and from that time forward he paid her the most
marked attentions; he wrote her a number of letters,
breathing sentiments of undying love and attachment,
telling her that her darling image and loveiy form occu-
pied his waking hours and sleeping dreams. (Laughter.)
She had so bewitched him that he feared he was
rather negligent in the performance of his duties as a
draper's assistant, for it was Cupid, and not calico or
cambric, that was uppermost in his mind. (Renewed
laughter.) The correspondence that passsd between
them was voluminous, but the learned counsel said he
should content himself with a few samples. Writing
from Odiham on March 9th, 18S4, he says:
"My dearest Marion,—You canhardly imagine how
your lovely letter of this morning relieved my poor
dull brain of all the weary thoughts that generally
occur in bachelor solitude. (A laugh.) But thanks,
darling, your sweet, loving, little epistle has acted as
an emetic, and has carried the black bile off. (Roars
of laughter.) You must always allow me to think
about you in my daily work, but do not be afraid that
I shall omit doing my ordinary duties; it will be the
reverse, for in having your loving angelic face always
in my memory it will inspire me with the everlasting
hope of gaining my chief desire on this earth—namely,
darling, your own sweet self. (Laughter.) With you,
my lovely one, my honeysuckle, my incomparable
Maid Marion,' as my wife and partner in all my joys
and sorrows, I will be an English Ajax, defying the
thunders and lightnings of mundane tribulation.
(Continued laughter.) In our wedded life, darling
(and oh! do I not wish the happy auspicious day of
our nuptials was now at Eand !), I hope sorrows will
be, as the poet says, few and far between. I suppose
we must wait a little while longer for that glorious
day which will consummate all my thoughts of ter-
restrial bliss."

In another of these effusive epistles, glowing with
tender and rapturous feelings of love, he wrote :
"The Bth March was your birthday, and strange to
say I was wondering and thinking W,,mt you all the
way along the road from Alton, whilst I was driving
in the low-backed car. I kept looking at my watch
every ten minutes or quarter of an hour, wondering
if you had got home in time. . . . Sorry you
were SO awfully hungry! What a pity you had not
some of those apples I had with me! Would I not
be superlatively pleased to present, like another
arbitrator of beauty, on a Hampshire Mount Ida, the
prize to the
.fairest goddess on earth—my darling
Marion. (aughter.) I had a favourable reply from
Yateley yesterday, and I am very glad of it, because
now I shall not be so very far from you. I shall tr,
and get the chance to see you often, as it is a beauti-
f ill road for walking along. Indeed, I do not knot
of any more secluded or appropriate promenade for
two fond hearts to coo and bill in."

---
(Laughter.) During his holidays he tcok her, said
the learned counsel, to the home- of his parents, by
whom she was accepted and treated as their future
daughter-in-law; she was the honoured7guest of his
numerous friends and relatives in Hampshire and
Sussex, who invited her to balls, dancing parties,
penny readings, and other forms of mild dissipa-
tion in which unsophisticated country folks like
to indulge. He told her his wages amounted to -2:2
a week, besides commission on whatever sales be
effected, and these latter, according to his own repre-
sentation, were occasionally very considerable. In
addition to these brilliant prospects he assured her
that his father and mother were thrifty people, the
former being for many years a coachman in the ser-
vice of the Right Hon. George Sclater-Booth, and
the latter a housekeeper to a nobleman in Hamp-
shire ; and at his mother's death, he told Miss
Mildon, he would be entitled to a large sum of money.
In the first week of March, 1884, with the full at"
proval and sanction of his parents and friends, be
solemnly ratified the promise he had previously made
to her. by giving her an engagement ring, and telling
her that she might regard herself as his betrothed
wife. He removed from Selborne to Petersfield, and
from the latter place he wrote her a letter in which be,
stated that his life was incomplete, cheerless, 09
melancholy, because she was not near him to solace
and soothe the weary, languid hours. (Laughter.)
"Marion," he gushes forth—
"My Sweet and Darling Marion,—When I take
my solitary walks abroad I am ever fondly thinking
of thee. (Continued merriment.) At church yester'
I day, when the parson preached
text, 'Love one another,' my thoughts were wander
ing from the subject of his discourse, and where were,
they? Aye, where ? They were nestling in you'
fond bosom. (Roars of laughter.) Life has lost its
charms for me; and why? The response is, because
my darling is away. Some moonstruck poet 031
wrote, Absence makes the heart grow fonder,' and
have bitterly realised the full truth of that assevere:
tion, for without you I am pining and'wasting am/Jr-
(Laughter.)
This letter concluded, said the learned counsel,
60,000 kisses, and with a number of geometrical
figures which he understood were, in the language 4,
love, emblematic of undying attaehment and perennial,
love. (Laughter.) In a subsequent letter, date?,
from Yateley, and addressed to his "Darling Marion, •
he beseeches her to remember him in her prayers'
and at the same time, while he is at Palborough, near
Brighton, to send him some of those amatory notes
that she had lately been in the habit of wr?ting t 9,
him. Away from her, his lovely, idolised one, he fell.
disconsolate and lonely, for without her he ofteu
thought he was like a ship without a captain or a boat
without a rudder. A very short time after these
gushing letters were written the plaintiff received 9
letter from the defendant expressing sentiments tbe
reverse of those which characterised his previous
communications; and in this note he coolly inforres
her that he must break off the engagement, as bit/
parents .did not approve of the intended marriage'
Miss Mildon was naturally horrified at this suddell
and astounding revulsion of affection on his part, arli
as might be expected, she indignantly wrote back;
asking for an explanation; but, said the learna
counsel, the quondam amorous swain did not deign
to give any excuse or exculpation for his despicab?
treatment of this poor young woman, and for sue;
disgraceful trifling with the affections of a chaste 9.0-`
virtuous woman he hoped the jury would award bit!
client not a vindictive or an immoderate amount 01
damages, but such a sum as would be some solatiurn
for her wounded feelings and the wrong done to b9r
womanly pride. The plaintiff gave evidence in enP"
port of the opening statement of her counsel. Tbe
defendant did not appear, nor was he legally repos'
sented. The jury assessed the damages at £5O.

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