East London Observer, Saturday 25 January 1879.

A popular divorce case.

A verdict on letters.

In the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, on Wednesday, before the right Hon. the President and Common Juries the case of Clements v. Clements and Monk was heard.

Mr. Talfourd Salter Q.C. and Mr. Searle appeared for the petitioner; Dr. Spinks, Q.C., and Mr. Pritchard for the respondent; the co-respondent in person.

The petitioner, an innkeeper, married the respondent at St. Peter's Church, Poplar, in November, 1872. In 1874 he became landlord of the "Imperial Arms Tavern" at Chislehurst, and lived with respondent until the early part of 1878, when he removed to a private house in the hope of weaning her from habits of intemperance which she had contracted. The change was at first beneficial to her, but after a time she relapsed, and the petitioner, who had carefully kept all stimulants from her, broke open her box in the expectation of finding some clue to the means by which she succeeded in gratifying her passion. He failed to find such a clue, but discovered, instead, concealed at the bottom of the box, a bundle of letters addressed to her by the co-respondent, a young sergeant of police, who was stationed at Chislehurst until the autumn of 1876. The letters satisfied him that a guilty intimacy had subsided between her and the co-respondent, and is therefore filed a petition for divorce on the ground of adultery. The respondent and co-respondent filed answers in denial of the charge, but admitted that a clandestine correspondence had passed between them. Their letters, especially those of the co-respondent, who seemed to have great fluency in composition, were of a highly sentimental kind, and those of the latter are abounded in expression of passionate love and prayers, generally "Dieu vous garde," (God bless you) for the respondent's welfare. They also assured her of his fidelity, and that she had no reason to be jealous of a supposed rival, named "A," whom he admitted meeting on a particular occasion, adding, however. "The theme of our conversation was a denunciation of Ritualistic practices in the Church of England," and they likewise pointed to clandestine meetings between him and a the respondent. Both denied on oath that their intimacy had been of a criminal character, but the co-respondent admitted that he had entertained for the respondent of feeling warmer than regard, the feeling arising out of sympathy for her because of alleged harshness on the part of her husband towards her.

The President, in summing up the case to the jury, told them that there was no evidence on which they will be justified in finding the respondent and co-responding guilty of adultery, unless they could draw the inference from the letters which passed between them. The letters showed that the respondent permitted the co-respondent to address her in the warmest terms of passion, and that she returned the passion, but they also contained internal evidence from which a jury would be warranted in coming to the conclusion that, however imprudent and criminal in sense the writers had been, they had not been guilty of the misconduct imputed to then.

The jury, after deliberating for some time, found a verdict in favour of the petitioner, and the Court pronounced a decree nisi.