The Widow Who Sued – a breach of promise

THE WIDOW WHO SUED!
THEN,
BREACH O’ PROMISE SUITED THE MAN.

An Ex Kalgoorlie Barmaid the Plaintiff
(Margaret Augusta Elizabeth BRIDGELAND)
and
an Ex -Publican of Boulder Block the Defendant
(‘Rorty’ Harry RODER)

The Bridgeland- Roder breach of promise for £1,000 action was heard and concluded before Judge Pring and a jury in the Civil Court, Sydney, on Wednesday last. The plaintiff, is well known on these goldfields, having formerly been employed as a barmaid in hotels of both Kalgoorlie and Boulder. It was about, two years and three months ago that she first appeared on these fields, a new arrival in the State from South Africa. To her first employer, the proprietor of the Home from Home Hotel, in Kalgoorlie, she said that she was a widow, of German extraction, with two children, aged about nine years and five years, her husband having been shot and killed in the Boer war.

Her mother accompanied her, and the family first lived in a cottage near the intersection of Lionel and Egan streets, afterwards moving to a house behind the Kalgoorlie racecourse polo ground. Whilst at the Home from Home Hotel a local youth became enamored of the woman. They had a tiff, however, Maggie Hemeter (as she was then known) broke off the engagement, threw up her billet and took service in the bar of the Ivanhoe Hotel on Boulder Block. The last that became known of her doings or whereabouts was that after Harry Roder, the then licensee of that house had been “paying his addresses’ to her. The woman gave out that she was ‘engaged to be married to the boss’, news which gained free circulation. When Ruder went down to Perth, Maggie Hemeter stated that the arrangement was that she should follow him, and that they would be married on the coast.

She followed Roder to Perth, but could not locate her promised second husband. Among those remembering Maggie Hemeter, the opinion pretty generally obtains that she was always influenced by her mother, who, according to one of “The Sun’s” informants, was a “great old money grabber.” On Friday the Sydney correspondent of this journal telegraphed the following details of the trial:

Margaret Elizabeth Bridgeland, widow, was plaintiff in an action for alleged breach of promise heard here, before Justice Pring and jury on Wednesday last. The defendant was Harry Roder, hotelkeeper, formerly of. W.A., now of Sydney. The plaintiff’s story was that, prior to 1906, she and her two children resided in England. Her husband. died of enteric fever, in South Africa during the Boer war, and early in 1906 she came to Australia and met the defendant at the Ivanhoe Hotel, at Boulder, of which he and his brother were proprietors. Some little time after, the defendant proposed marriage to her and she accepted him. The defendant arranged to proceed to Perth when he and brother, Peter Roder, sold out the Ivanhoe Hotel, and would endeavor to purchase a hotel business there. Five or six weeks after his promise to marry her the Ivanhoe Hotel was sold and plaintiff went to live with her mother in Kalgoorlie. The defendant visited and behaved affectionately towards her and the children. One Saturday the plaintiff, at the defendant’s request, accompanied him to Coolgardie, as he desired to show her a good mining proposition. Defendant importuned her to stop at Coolgardie that night with him. She consented and returned to Kalgoorlie next day. Her mother said

“This is a nice thing – you coming home at this time.”

Roder replied “Whats is the difference ? We have got nothing to be ashamed of as we are going to be married.” Roder subsequently went to Perth, and eventually traveled to Sydney and took on the Morning Star Hotel. In May 1907, the plaintiff and her mother left Kalgoorlie. The plaintiff communicated with the defendant from Melbourne and received a letter from him forwarding £30, and stating that some day she would find out that she was as much to blame as he. The plaintiff came to Sydney in October last year when the defendant stated that he could not carry out his promise, being already married. She asked “What are you going to do? You must do something, you know the condition I am in I cannot stay here.” He suggested that she should go to a home or a private hospital. She went to a nurse in Flinders street.

Mr James, the defendant’s counsel, said Bridgeland admitted writing a letter to defendant asking for money, and stating “I know you, have another woman, but that does not matter to me so long as you send me what I have asked for.”

Defendant, Harry Roder, went into the box and swore that he engaged the plaintiff as a barmaid and something occurred between them about a week after, and that this illicit relationship continued. Defendant denied that he ever asked the plaintiff to marry him. They went to Coolgardie to look at a claim which she said her brother owned. But they could find neither claim nor brother. Afterwards she explained that the claim she had taken him down to show him had been jumped. On the way back she suggested that they should stay there till tomorrow, and he, nothing loath, agreed – and they did so!

Before he left Kalgoorlie she told him her ‘condition’ and wanted to be allowed to stay with him. He told her that it was impossible because he was a married man. she did not seem surprised. The judge, in summing up, said that the case was a very remarkable one. He could not help feeling great regret that it had ever been brought into court, because the parties had admitted the occurrence of a course of immoral conduct which, he would have thought, they would preferred to give no publicity to. In all the correspondence, with the exception of one letter, there was not a single word of endearment. There was no expression of regret at parting, no suggestion of future marriage. After an absence of five minutes the jury found a verdict in favor of the defendant.