Among the musical works I enjoy are Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas. My first encounter with them was their 1875 ‘Trial by Jury’. The plot concerns a “breach of promise of marriage” lawsuit in which the judge and legal system are the objects of light-hearted satire.
In 1881 The Graphic noted that when considering such cases, “the Court has to decide whether any promise has ever been made, and this entails the reading of many love-letters which, however amusing to people in general, cannot but be exceedingly painful to both of the parties concerned, while occasionally it is an absolute waste of public time.” One such case, in early 1906, concerned New Malden (Surrey) undertaker Frederick Paine, then aged 35.
Was this sad case of interest to anyone outside the NW Surrey area? Apparently so: amongst the many newspapers carrying the story were the Hartlepool Daily Mail, Drogheda Conservative, Derby Daily Telegraph and Halifax Daily Guardian. The Dublin Evening Mail helpfully told its readers that Mr. Paine was “a gentleman of very ample proportions and a gentle voice” whilst Laura Mills was a “young lady of great literary gifts”. The Belper News rated it an amusing breach of promise case. Most news reports ran to several hundred words (probably from agency copy), but the Surrey Comet’s report ran to nearly 3,000!
Reynolds News, Sunday 04 February 1906, reported the case thus:
LAUNDRESS OBTAINS DAMAGES FOR BREACH OF PROMISE
In the King’s Bench Division on Monday. before Mr. Justice Darling, and a jury, Miss Laura Charlotte Mills now of Merton-road, Southfield, sued Mr. Frederick Owen [William] Paine, an undertaker and house and estate agent. of New Malden, Surrey, for damages for breach of promise of marriage.
Defendant pleaded that the relations between him and Miss Mills were purely platonic. Counsel for the plaintiff stated that the latter assisted her brother in a laundry, and defendant in partnership with her mother, carrying on the business of an undertaker, ironmonger. and house agent. The parties became acquainted in 1894, where they were both living at the time. He became “struck with her,” said counsel, and asked her to marry him. The reaction came in May, 1904, after “hundreds of letters” had passed between the lovers, and the undertaker had put off the marriage several times. He became very cold and terminated the engagement.
The lady’s counsel then gave the Court a number of glimpses into the voluminous correspondence of the pair. In one of the first the swain signed himself, “Scorcher.” ”
“A Lot of Humbug”
Here is a note dated January 4, 1901 :
My Dear – I expect you will be looking for a letter from me, so I must not disappoint you. I well know what it is waiting for the post coming in. I think there is nothing more trying.
I have a very bad headache. I have been to chapel twice and church once this week. At the latter I was present at a christening. It struck me as being a lot of humbug, and I wondered whether I should ever be called upon to play a similar part in a similar ceremony. It was the first baby of a newly-married couple. The Vicar … said it was a beautiful baby, and ever so good.—
With love, yours faithfully. FRED
A letter of his, in a different strain, ran thus. Its date was May 25.1905 :-
Madame, I have received a letter from your solicitor. l am astonished at audacity. After all the kindness and sympathy I have shown you, and after all I have done, you threaten to blackmail me because you failed to inveigle me to marry you. Since you abuse what intended for a purely platonic friendship, I feel justified in making use of your letters, all of which I have kept and also if I find certain relatives are assisting are you, I shall feel justified in giving them certain statements you made concerning their moral character.
Mr. Moyses, for defendant, said Mr. Paine would deny that he made a promise to marry. He was an undertaker, and a funeral was more in his line than a marriage. In the witness box Mr. Paine emphatically denied that he ever made a promise. The jury, after deliberating for a quarter of an hour, awarded plaintiff £50 damages and costs.
Two things surprise me about this case:
Firstly, before writing this piece I would have expected such cases to be the preserve of the upper and upper middle classes, perhaps where an engagement had been announced in The Times or The Lady and then broken off, but here we have a laundry assistant and undertaker in the High Court. Virtually all the cases thrown up by a search on ‘Breach of Promise’ in the British Newspaper Archive concern ‘ordinary’ people: a housekeeper and baker, a nurse and grocer, a parlourmaid and electrician and so on. Confining the search to ‘London Evening Standard’ and ‘1906’ pulls up 125 reports, no doubt all lapped up by a prurient audience.
Secondly, the verdict. In his summing up his Lordship said that “in the letters there was not one word about marriage. If there was a promise of marriage it was remarkable that it was not mentioned in the letters.” I read this as a strong hint to the jury to dismiss the claim, but they didn’t. The £50 damages (+ costs) would have equated to around a year’s wages for Miss Mills, a not insubstantial amount.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
P.S. About what happened to Laura Mills. I know nothing. Do you? Frederick Paine went on to marry but the marriage ended in divorce. On his death in 1945 his undertaking business, then one of the largest in the country passed to his sister, then in turn to London Necropolis, Alliance Property, Great Southern Group, SCI and then Dignity plc. Breach of promise lawsuits in UK were abolished from 1 January 1971 (More).