UNDER HER THUMB.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3267, 12 July 1911, Page 3

UNDER HER THUMB.

ASYLUM ATTENDANT’S FEAR UF WIFELY DOMINATION.

BROKEN PROMISE, £5

Harriet Florence French, a gouulooking young parlormaid, of Hove, was at Eastbourne, .recently, awarded £5 as damages for breach of promise against Edwin Read, attendant at the East Sussex Asylum. Hellingly. The parties went .to school together, and 1 after Read left the Army the friendship was resumed. Two hundred love-letters were written, "all couched,” said counsel, "more or less in the usual terms.” During part of that time Read was at a school at Cheltenham ,and on Oct. 3,1909, he sent Miss French a letter containing'these words :

I am as happy as any man in Chel•tenham, and in the best of health. Darling, I have got the ring.

Miss French said Read visited her every month till March, when he wrote : I expect you will be surprised to receive "this letter from me. Fahey you saying you would get me under your thumb. I would' not allow any woman to do that. I hope you will forget me.

The, first Wednesday in August he been fixed for the wedding, said Miss French, and she had bought several articles, including her wedding dies Read handed in a statement, in the course of which he said lie "iid Miss French, at her suggestion, banked their savings in her name. This year she said her mother had borrowed £1 He proceeded: I said very little of this at the time, ■but thought more. When I went to Hove on a subsequent occasion 1 sa w my sister, who said Florrie had been round to see her and said she did hot like my going to Eastbourne instead of Hove, but that when she had got me I should know she’d got me. That was said in a most threatening and offensive manner.