The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-28 00:00:00

HAVILAND V. MORTIBOY.

The curious case of " Haviland v. Mortiboy,"
-which has occupied the High Court of Chancery
for five days, and filled some dozen columns of the
newspapers, has just been brought to a conclusion.
In delivering that elaborate judgment which we
printed yesterday, Lord Chelmsford expressed an
opinion that, looking at the intricacy of the evi-
dence, the time of the Court had not been unneces-
sarily occupied. If so, since of the many readers
who took an interest in the case in its early stages
few can have followed its remarkable evolution, we
may render service by presenting the facts in a

brief summary.
On the morning of the 26th February, 1824, a man
and woman presented themselves at St. Pancras
Church as James Masters and Mary Jones, widow,
and were married. On the Bth of March following
only ten days afterwards, the same female was
married at Marylebone Church, in the name of
Mary Wall, to John Sheppard. Mr. and Mrs.
Sheppard lived together from the time a marriage
until 1843, when they agreed to a separation. In
1815 the husband died worth £6,000, and his

widow, having administered, distributed his estate
reserving to herself the portion to which she would
be entitled as his widow. In January, 1857, she
died also, disposing of her property in favour of the
children of Mr. Mortiboy. The family of Mr.
Sheppard, disappointed at the disposal of money to
which they considered they had some claim, saw
no means of obtaining any share of the property,
until an accident, as they allege, placed in their
possession a certificate of Mrs. Sheppard's earlier
marriage with Masters, of which they were till
then unaware. Upon discovering this fact they
filed their bill in this suit, Haviland being the next
of kin of John, and Mortiboy the executor of Mary,
Sheppard. The plaintiffs contended that the first
marriage, with Masters, rendered the second, which
followed immediately upon it, illegal. The defend-
ants replied that the two marriages were those of
the same parties under different names—that, in-
deed, not only was " Mary Jones" Mary Wall, as
both sides admitted, but that James Masters was
also John Sheppard. The Vice-Chancellor decided
against them, and condemning the second marriage
as illegal, thereby annulled the rights of the testator
as Sheppard's widow, with all the testamen-
tary dispositions which had been built upon them.
It will readily be supposed that to ascertain by ver-
bal testimony the identity of parties to a ceremony
which took place five and thirty years ago was no
easy matter. Yet this was to be done before either
the legality or the illegality of Mary Wall's second
marriage could be established. The defendants,
dissatisfied with the Vice-Chancellor's decision, ap-
pealed, and the plaintiffs were required once more
to pcove their case.
.Nlary Wall, to speak of her first in what proves
to have been her maiden name, appears to have com-
menced life by trading on her personal attractions.
In the words of Lord Justice Knight Bruce, she
was " a member of the demi-monde." She is first
heard of as living in lodgings at Gloucester-place,
where she was visited by a nobleman, who for the
purposes of their intercourse condescended to be re-
puted a commercial traveller, and to bear the un-
aristocratic name of Jones. This person, on breaking
off his connection with Mary Wall, appears to have
bought for her the lease of a house in Mornington-
place, in which she was visited by a person named
Masters, whose name she bore for a time, as she had
before borne that of the pseudo-Jones. The question
for the Court to decide was, who was this Masters?
The plaintiffs' case was, that he was a mechanic,
mean-looking, and 45 years old, facts which it is
hard to reconcile with the woman's mercenary way
of life. The defendants' witnesses say he was a gen-
tleman ; and supposing him to have been a man of
property, his acceptance, notwithstanding his per-
sonal inferiority, becomes intelligible. According to
the plaintiff's theory, Mary Wall committed bigamy
without apparent motive, almost on the morrow of
the first marriage, and Masters acquiesced in it
against his interest. It was proved that he called
at the door one morning, satisfied himself that the
marriage had taken place, and was never heard of
afterwards. Upon the plaintiff's showing, he thus
lightly abandoned, needy as he was, a well-fur-
nished house and a wife with money, while, on the
other hand, that wife, in obtaining her settlement
on her marriage with Sheppard, never thought of
securing herself against Masters. On the supposi-
tion of the defendants, that Masters was a " man of
property," that Mary Wall was his mistress, and
that Sheppard had been induced to marry her by
a pecuniary consideration offered by Masters, the
circumstance presents no difficulty. Somebody of
consequence, at any rate, had an interest in bring-
ing about the second marriage, for the settlement
of Mary Wall's property contains the name of a
trustee occupying a station in life higher than those
who usually act for the wives of working jewellers.
But admitting all this in favour of the defendants,
it may be asked why the same persons should
choose to be married twice over, and how the
difference of name is explained. The conduct of
the female is not unintelligible. The fiction of
a former marriage with Mr. Jones was one she
would naturally favour for her own credit, as
landlady of a respectable house. The assumption
of a second name by Sheppard is accounted for, if
we remember that Mary Wall had become known
to many persons by the name of Mrs. Masters, and
that she would like to receive some sanction for
bearing it, while Sheppard was a man who would
not object to take any name which would promote
his interests. But when the settlement, to which,
as we have seen, persons of more intelligence than
the newly married pair were parties, was to be
made, it was probably seen that the use of fictitious
nayne, would he Vital, and a re-marriage with real
OOitic t oci. Such was the suggestion
an it remove; the last
"' :11, C"l' P. TI c. lord Chancellor, the
J a 'tic.. .Nni„'lt Bruce, and the Lord Justice
Turner, upon a review of the facts, were unani-
mously of opinion that Masters was one with Shep-
pard as was Wall with Jones, and that Mrs. Shep-
pard, therefore, was the widow of John Sheppard
and entitled to her moiety of the property.
In reviewing the judgment of the Court below
the Lord Chancellor and the Lords Justices amply
acknowledged the usefulness of one of the most
important of the recent Chancery reforms—that
which permits the viva voce examination of wit-
nesses. For four days the Court was occupied in
hearing witnesses, and the result was that the case,
instead of being presented to the Judges in fixed
and rigid incompleteness, grew into form under the
searching questions of counsel. We find the Lord
hancellor stating that when the appeal was
brought to the Lords Justices, they were of
opinion that " it was essential to the ascertaining of
the truth in a case of such strange and conflicting
improbability that there should be a viva voce
examination of the -witnesses in open Court and
before the full Court ;" and that " the proceedings
before this Court had added materially to the evi-
dence, and had placed the case in a different position
to that in which it stood before the Vice-Chan-
cellor." Yet only recently this innovation was
energetically opposed as something incompatible
with the quiet dignity of the Court of Chancery,
and even now that the Court has the power of
calling witnesses before it, some of the Judges
maintain their old prejudices against the lessons of
experience and the dictates of common sense.—
Daily News.

The Mersey Dock Board, at their meeting yester
day granted a pension of £•5O per annum to a lady who for
twenty years has filled the post of treasurer to the Pilot
Establishment of Liverpool, but whose services are now no
longer required.
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