The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-14 00:00:00

mony ;" Taylor on Evidence, 3d edition, part 2,
chapters 1:5, 7, 14, and 15.
By order of the Council,
RICHARD BETHELL, Chairman.
Council Chamber, Lincoln's-inn, March 2.

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF DIVORCE.

A somewhat remarkable action f n' divorce came
before the First Division of the Court of Session at

Edinburgh, last week, for judgment. Mr. John
M'Iver, banker in Ding-wall,Ross-shire, and Provost
of the burgh, is the pursuer (plaintiff) in the case,
and seeks to obtain divorce from his wife on the
ground of adultery. Suspicion against his wife
was first presented to his mind by a letter written
and placed in his hand by his wife's sister, Ellen
O'Doherty, on the 25th of February, 1857, which,
while professing deep sorrow and repentance for
having aided her sister in corresponding and
meeting with her alleged paramour, discloses cir-
cumstances of a painful nature, and leading to
the assumption that, in a pre-arranged interview
between Mrs. M'Iver and Dr. Goron, of Port
Stewart, Ireland, in the Royal Hotel, Belfast, on
the 12th of July, 1856, an act of adultery
had been committed. It would appear that in
early life Mrs. Diver, then Miss Eliza O'Doherty,
became acquainted with Dr. Gordon, and that a
strong and evidently pure attachment had arisen
between them—an attachment which seemed
on both sides to survive the separation of their
fortunes caused by circumstances, and even
the marriage of both the lovers to different part-
ners. Dr. Gordon, who first met Miss O'Doherty
in 1837, addressed her under the romantic name of
" Una," in songs and sonnets (one of which appeared
at the time in the Dublin University Magazine),
and also in highly romantic love letters. But the
course of their true love did not run smooth. Dr.
Gordon married another lady, whom he describes
in his correspondence with the defender as his
"loving, true, and faithful wife ;" and by her he
had three children. Mrs. M'Iver marred the pur-
suer in 1843, and is the mother of five children.
Twice during her married life she met Dr. Gordon,
once a few months after marriage, and the second
time on the occasion above referred to. Dr. Gordon,
who had for:some years been in declining health,
died in 1857, about a year after the alleged adul-
tery. The statement of Ellen O'Doherty is that, on
her sister's account, and at her instigation, she kept
up an occasional correspondence with Dr. Gordon,
and was the medium of conveying love messages
between him and her sister ' • that in May, 1856, Dr.
Gordon, who then proposed to go abroad to recruit
his failing health, expressed a wish to see Mrs.
M'Iver before doing so ; that, on pretence of Ellen's
illness, the two sisters went south to Edinburgh,
professedly to consult Dr. Simpson, and that while
there, they found that Dr. Gordon was unable to
come so far, and that he appointed Belfast as the
place of meeting. The following is Miss O'Doherty's
description (given in the letter referred to) of the
scene that took place in Belfast :—
" We got there at four next morning (Saturday). Dr.
Gordon arrived the night before, and slept at the Royal
Hotel, where we went by appointment; he came to the
room we occupied, and there they met. Eliza was not in
the room when he came in, but she came in a few minutes,
and immediately on entering they were locked in each
other's arms ; soon after this I went to a bedroom, and re-
mained there nearly two hours. I was horrified at what I
had done, and the conduct of both. Eliza came in, looking
flushed, and she said, Poor Bob has gone out for a little ;
it was very kind of you to leave us for such a length of time
alone—we had much to say to each other ; poor darling
Robert, how ill and thin he is.' I said to her, ' Where is
your brooch ? Your chemisette is quite open.' She re-
plied, ' Bob does not like it, so he took it out.' . •
Well, to continue, the day was wearing on, I saw her with
him as I would be ashamed to be or see any one, and was
there a long time. She was crying when she came out, and
when I said, What is wrong P' she said,' Oh, poor Bob is
in such a state about parting with me. Oh, if I had not
been married. Oh dear, what will I do, my darling Robert ?
I have a husband and five children, but I could desert them
all for you in your loneliness, and his love for me now is
proved.' This and much more she said, and I was thank-
ful when we got into the steamer that night for Glasgow
again. . . . She cried the whole day, and talked of her
darling Robert and her broken heart. She said to me
there, what she afterwards repeated at Fortrose, that she
left me every opportunity of making up to you, John, for
the love she could not :give you—a pretty speech to a
a youg girl of her husband—and that she had never em-
braced you, or 'slept in your arms, but with the thought
for ever in her heart that you were Gordon."
A miniature of Dr. Gordon belonging to Mrs. M'Iver
was conveyed by Miss O'Doherty in the same pac-
ket with the above letter, and various other infe-
rential proofs of her sister's guilt vere pointed out.
The above letter was the groundwork of the present
action, and evidence was taken by commission in
the case, and was laid before the court in a volu-
minous record. The Judge-Ordinary in the case
(Lord Benholme) found Mrs. M'Iver guilty of
adultery, and granted divorce, but the case being
brought under review of the Judges of the First
Division, they decided by three to one that not
only was there no legal proof of the wife's guilt,
but that the evidence did not even amount to moral
proof.
Lord Ivory stated his opinion at some length"'
pointing out that several of the witnesses, including
Ellen, appeared to be animated by a strong feeling
of hostility to the defender, and that a very unusual
intimacy appeared to subsist between the pursuer
and Ellen, and that Ellen had actually abstracted
from the custody of others some of the proofs she
now offered of her sister's guilt. After reviewing
the circumstances of the previous history of the
defender and Dr. Gordon, his lordship referred to
the interview of 1856, and said he was never more
convinced of anything than that that visit was un-
dertaken without any unchaste purpose, whatever
might have taken place afterwards. It was a visit
of friendship, of old regard—not an ordinary assig-
nation ; more like a passage in an extravagant
novel than a matter of real life. She went, believing
she was never to see him again. In the hotel their
conduct did not excite suspicion. The chambermaid
thought the defender was courting him for the
young lady, and she did not observe that the bed
had been used, though she would not have re-
marked it much, as he was so delicate. One waiter
saw her in the doctor's bed room—the two stand-
ing together looking out of the window, and half an
hour after he looked through the keyhole and saw
them at the window still, Gordon standing with his
arms behind his back. This was very inexcusable
on the part of Mrs. M'Iver, but it was not proof of
guilt. That was the whole case without the evi-
dence of Ellen O'Doherty. It was artful, self-pos-
sessed, very clever ; but, on analysis, it was not
sound, and it did not agree with her letter. She
was for years an accomplice, and latterly a betrayer;
and her letter, which she professed to have writ-
ten in a fit of repentance, was a clever memorial
of the whole case, and it was marked by a strong
spirit of hostility to the defender, whose jealousy
of her with her husband had given her offence.
She had unduly possessed herself of the minia-
ture and documents ; she had destroyed some
and preserved others, and she ;had given up to
the pursuer those things which she had received
from the defender to keep from his sight. He had
no confidence in a single word this witness spoke,
and would not use it against her sister on so heavy
a charge. She professed great purity, and was
shocked at what she saw pass between her sister
and Dr. Gordon, but she was equally free with the
pursuer, her brother-in-law. When in Edinburgh,
even on the business of the present suit, he was
constantly kissing her, and calling her " dearest
Nelly," and she was calling him " dearest John."
They were seen together in the theatre, and, in
short, the conduct of the two sisters was remarkably
alike, and they helped to explain each other. He
was casting no imputation upon the chastity of
Miss Ellen. He entertained no such notion, but
he thought that she might excuse in her sister
what she innocently practised herself. The letter
of Dr. Gordon to the defendant, of which so much
has been made, was exceedingly Irish, and exceed-
ingly absurd. It read like a chapter from the
" Sorrows of Werther," and, with all its bombast,
was far from an incentive to lust. On the whole, he
thought there was proof enough of much bad taste,
but he
woman considered moral delinquency very doubt-
ful, and. it was not upon evidence like this that a
thrown 1:7:tiiettiom of be
divorced from her husband and
the
owrodrledu. poverty and helplessness upon
rriehill took the opposite view. He would
not have considered the retirement to the bedroom
of hciisla
ihif it
had
aed entertained i
de-
fendereonclus been proved that the
rapure feelings towards
Dr. Gordon. That
glowing and amorous lan-
sensuality, and it was in answer to one frIotmwahsera,
was
character.
tainted with
which had no doubt the same
from ,
mianrriseudchweman could receive •
compro-
mised
alcut
at letter
that couched
o
any man but her husband without being
by it, or feeling her virtue insulted. They
went to the hotel in Belfast on the understanding
that they were to pass as brother and sister, and
conceal their intended conduct by that falsehood.
Her confessions to more than one witness, that she
never embraced her husband but in the imagination
that it was Dr. Gordon, and her admission to her
sister that she had permitted the removal of her
brooch and the manipulation of her person, together
with the whole character of the written clandestine
correspondence, led him to be clearly of opinion
that the retirement to the bedroom took place to
consummate their guilt.
Lord Dees expressed the same opinion as Lord
Ivory, and even in stronger terms, and stated that,
within his own knowledge he knew of a case in
which an early attachment, which had ceased to be
a passion, had remained a deep-seated feeling; and
he believed that had a like meeting taken place, as
for 40 years it was wished for, no meeting could be
more free from sensual thoughts, nor could the
nature of the sentiment still subsisting be better
described than in Dr. Gordon's letter, in which lie