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tropolis to enter into some business. He took a house and cellars in Ratcliffe-highway, where he commenced business, and his wife attended to the bar. Though living at Norwich, the defendant occasionally came up to the metropolis; and when he did so, was a visitor, as a relative and aequaintance, at the plaintiff's house at Ratcliffe-highway. The defendant came to his house when in town, in the month of March in the last year; and one day after dinner, pressed the plaintiff to accompany him to the Royalty Theatre. A coach was called, and the plaintiff and defendant set out for the theatre. Before they set out, the defendant said to the plaintiff that he would take a bed in his house that night, and return home with him after the play. After they arrived at the Royalty Theatre, the defendant, under some pretext, withdrew from the box, and promised in a few minutes to return to the plaintiff-a promise which he never kept, for the plaintiff did not see him again at the theatre in the course of the evening. The moment he quitted the box, he returned quickly home to the plaintiff's house, and on his making his re-appearance there, the plaintiff's wife, who always before staid at the bar when her husband was out, until the hour of shutting it, which was eleven o'clock, retired with the defendant, and without a light, into the parlour behind the bar;-she was seen a little before her having so retired, in the kitchen with the defendant, his arm around her neck, and his hand in her bosom. Leading to the bar and parlour there was a passage, in which there were two doors, one of them more immediately leading to the bar from the parlour than the other, and which was always used by Mrs. Wright; but on this occasion, that more convenient door was observed, by one of the female servants, who had occasion to go there, to be closed fast, and her mistress answered her at the other door-a circumstance altogether unusual. She (the mistress) appeared then, with her dress in great disorder. After Mrs. Wright had been observed to go from the bar into the parlour with the defendant, the cellar.

man employed on the premises, was standing with one of the female servants in the kitchen. They heard a noise like chairs jogging or beating time against the floor in the parlour, and the man had the curiosity to go and listen, to ascertain the cause. He passed to the bar along the passage. One of the doors (the nearer one) was shut, but the further one was just-ajar: there was no light, and he crept softly on, until he obtained a peep through the unclosed door, when he saw the defendant and Mrs. Wright in such a peculiar situation-in such close contact and performing such operations as could leave no doubt on the mind as to the motive which guided them to the end they had in view. She was afterwards seen in great dishabille passing through the kitchen into the yard; and one of the servants assisted in putting her cap and gown to rights, after their disorder. The husband soon after returned, and his wife went to the door and let him in; but she endeavoured as much as possible to conceal her appearance, by keeping behind the door as he passed in. When the plaintiff went into the parlour, and saw the defendant at home before him, he complained of his having left him so abruptly at the theatre; and the defendant retorted that it was he who had missed him, for on returning and not finding him, he thought he had shaped his course homewards, and therefore he had bent his way in the same direction, and had fallen asleep almost ever since. The parties then sat down to supper, and defendant staid there on that, and, he believed, the following night.

: Several witnesses were called to prove the case, and that the husband and wife lived happily together.

Matthew Wiggins, the cellar-man, deposed to what had before been stated of his peeping into the parlour, and discovering his mistress and the defendant closely engaged in the "soft encounter;" and in about ten days or a fortnight after communicated to his master, of his own accord, what he had seen. His master then said nothing to him for several days. His mistress left the house a few days after. During two years that witness lived in the house, his master and mistress lived

happily together. He always used her well. They lived comfortable. He had no animosity against his mistress whatever.

Mr. Gurney then rose, and addressed the jury for the defendant. He said that their experience must have told them, that no cases differed so widely from each other as those of a Crim. Con, character. Some of them were rendered, by their circumstances, of great and lamentable aggravation-where a defendant had by wiles and intrigue undermined the honour of a virtuous woman, and had ultimately made her fall by his arts. There was no suggestion, even if the whole of what had been stated in evidence was true, that this was a case of that description. The utmost that had been suggested did not amount to any aggravated case of seduction; for here the intercourse of the parties was casual-the defendant living mostly at a great distance from the plaintiff, and only coming now and then as an ordinary visitor to his house. According to one of the servants, who had lived six months at the house, she had never seen the defendant there before this alleged transaction. They had here no seduction, no arts, no deceit. As to the condition of the woman, she was as they had heard, merely serving in a gin-shop, and possibly romping with the defendant in the manner her maids sometimes do, and out of that, perhaps, was framed the whole case. If the jury thought this was a case for damages, he was sure they would think with him, that the smallest damages would be quite sufficient for such a transaction.

Lord Chief Justice Abbott, in charging the jury, said that the first question which they had to consider was, whether they believed the adultery had been committed. If they believed the witness Wiggins, then upon that point there could be no doubt, for on his testimony the proof rested, the other witnesses merely speaking to acts of impropriety, but not amounting to the principal act. With respect to the question of damages, it was true, that this case was unattended withthe points of aggravation which sometimes are found in such offences. They would of course look at the

plaintiff's situation, at the injury he had received, and at the probable means at the disposal of the defendant. They would consider these circumstances dispassionately, and apportion the damages which they deemed applicable to a case of this character.

The jury consulted together for about five minutes, and then returned a verdict for the plaintiff-damages, One Hundred Pounds.

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS.-Dec. 4.
PENNINGTON versus LOWE.

Mr. Serjeant Pell stated the case to the jury. He said, that the situation of Mr. Pennington, the plaintiff, had for some years past been most distressing, in consequence of pecuniary embarrassments, and the present case came in aggravation of his misfortunes. In the year 1808, Mr. Pennington, then a widower, without children by his former wife, married the lady, whose misconduct had given rise to this action. She was the daughter of a gentleman named Alvan, and at the period of her marriage was about twenty-one years of age, Mr. Pennington being then about thirty-four. They had lived together for many years in the greatest possible harmony, and the marriage was satisfactory to the friends on both sides, with the exception of Mr. Alvan, whose objection to it was so strong from the commencement, that he refused to see her for twelve months afterwards, and could never be perfectly reconciled to her husband. This determined aversion, on his part, continued to be shown in the most manifest manner down to the year 1817, by which time his daughter had four children, the youngest of whom, a little girl, had been christened by the name of Ellen Lowe Pennington---Lowe, as the Jury would observe, being the name of the defendant. Mr. Pennington had been a coalmerchant, but becoming extremely embarrassed in the year 1818, he applied to his father-in-law for assistance, and the jury would be shocked to hear, that the

only condition upon which the application would have been listened to was, that the husband should consent to separate for ever from the wife of his heart, with whom he lived at the time in the full enjoyment of conjugal happiness. At this period the greatest intimacy subsisted between the defendant and Mr. Pennington, who little suspected his base designs. It appeared that in 1817 a separation had taken place, and Mr. and Mrs. Pennington lived apart from each other. Mrs. Pennington, upon that event, went first to reside at a house belonging to her father, in Duncan-place, Battersea-fields, and afterwards removed to a house in the Wandsworth-road. She left that residence in a short time, and went to live with her mother at Woodford, her father having died in the year 1818. In the mean time she had not given up her acquaintance with Lowe, who still continued to visit her; and his attentions at Woodford assumed so marked a character, that the mother found it necessary to forbid him her house, and Mrs. Pennington was also not permitted to enter it any more. She then went to a place called Theydon Bois, near Epping, whither she was attended by the defendant, whom she never lost sight of. In August, 1819, she affected to be troubled with the rheumatism, and said she would go to Southend for the benefit of sea-bathing. But did she go there?. No such thing. She left Theydon Bois, it was true, but not for Southend; and when she returned, on the 3d of November, she brought back an infant child with her, of which she had been delivered at a small house near Wanstead. The defendant was the person who had taken that house, representing himself as an officer on halfpay, and stating that his wife (meaning Mrs. Pennington) was near her confinement. It would be proved to the entire satisfaction of the jury, that the parties lived together in that house as man and wife; and this being the case, no doubt could exist on their minds that the defendant had perfected the wickedness which he had contemplated from the commencement. Yet the guilt of the defendant might still have eluded the visitation of justice, had it it not been for an extraordinary cir

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