Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

21 Damaged Goods ABBIE FOSTER was a young woman "with a past". She had been improperly and immodestly intimate with a married man named Fuller, who had perhaps become weary of the illegal relation. Abbie had thereupon reformed. When the defendant, Henry Hanchett, came to town to live she appeared to him to be a modest and proper young woman, in every way fit to be a wife. Henry Hanchett paid court to the girl and soon found himself deeply in love. While Abbie's conscience may have troubled her at thus deceiving a trusting young man, yet she consoled herself that what Henry did not know would never hurt him. So the young man yielded to the witchery of moonlight and the art of an experienced enchantress. He proposed and Abbie promptly accepted him. Shortly after their engagement was announced Henry began to receive mysterious hints that his "light-o-love" was not all that she should be. Scandal is one of the most easily discovered items of information concerning anyone. But Henry Hanchett was not content with mere scandal. He investigated the facts and confronted Abbie with his findings. She tearfully admitted the truth of the allegations but pleaded youth and inexperience as the reasons for yielding to a designing philanderer. She assured the angry man that she had repented and reformed, but Henry declared that he would never marry a woman against whom the finger of scorn could be pointed. So he broke the engagement. Abbie sued for breach of promise of marriage. At the trial there was some question whether the failure of the plaintiff to disclose the compromising facts would amount to an absolute defense or could be set up merely as mitigation of damages. The court held that "if any man has been paying his addresses to one whom he supposes to be a modest person, and afterward discovers her to be a loose and immodest woman, he is justified in breaking any promise of marriage that he may have made to her." The case was Foster v. Hanchett, 68 Vt. 319; 35 Atl. 316. Half Truth Equivalent to Concealment ' WE HAVE a common saying that half a truth is as bad as a lie. This doctrine has found favor in the law to such an extent that a person who tells nothing but the truth may nevertheless be guilty of deceit if there is more truth that should have' been told. You are perhaps familiar with the form of oath commonly administered in court, when a witness is required to swear that his testimony will be "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ' If, therefore, a woman tells her lover the truth but yet fails to disclose other damaging facts that would have given a very different complexion to the facts first related, she is guilty of deceit and may forfeit her rights to the engagement of marriage. The plaintiff was a young and attractive woman. The defendant was well along in years and possessed of considerable wealth, which was perhaps his chief attraction so far as the plaintiff was concerned. She represented herself as the daughter of a prominent lawyer of South Carolina. She claimed that her mother belonged to one of the best white families in the South, which might have been true. She failed to state, however, that her mother had some negro blood. She stated that after the death of her lawyer father her mother had married again but that the second marriage was not popular with her mother's people, so the family moved to California. The fact was that the second husband was a colored barber, an octoroon, and gossip did not hesitate to name him as the reputed father of the plaintiff. She Wielded a Carving Knife A MOTHER half truth was her statement ■**■ that, before leaving the Pacific Coast, she had obtained a divorce from her husband for cruel and abusive treatment. She failed to state that her husband had filed a cross bill and had secured a divorce from her in which he had charged her with possession of a violent and ungovernable temper; that she was jealous, revengeful and vicious. He charged her with having as Dean Gleason L. Archer 1.LD. saulted him with a carving knife and with using profane epithets concerning himself and his relatives. The female plaintiff must have been unusually attractive and the defendant overburdened with wealth for, notwithstanding all of these facts, the jury awarded the woman $40,000 damages for breach of promise of marriage. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, however, took a very different view of the case. It declared that failure to reveal the whole truth in each of these particulars amounted to fraud for which the defendant had a right to break off the engagement. The case was VanHouton v. Morse, 162 Mass. 414. 38 N. E. 705. Is Man Obliged to Marry Invalid WE HAVE CONSIDERED the right of of a man to break his engagement to a woman to whom he had proposed in a belief that she was a modest and virtuous woman but who later proves to be immoral. This right, as I have indicated his based upon the fact that the man was deceived in the true character of the woman when he offered himself in marriage. This rule applies whether the woman has taken any measures to conceal her past or whether she simply refrains from giving the man unsolicited information concerning her conduct with other men. But now suppose we have a situation where a man, who is in love with a woman, learns of her past misdeeds, either from her own lips or otherwise, but who nevertheless persists in his endeavor to persuade her to marry him. May he thereafter break his engagement and excuse himself by alleging the unchastity of which he was familiar at the time of the engagement? Proposal With Knowledge of Shady Past TT SHOULD appeal to all fair minded peo■* pie that if a man, acting with knowledge of the facts, asks a woman to marry him, he should thereafter have no right to use the past transgressions as a weapon of defense. We all know that if a married man, knowing that his wife has violated her marriage vows, nevertheless receives her again in his home and treats her as a wife, the law considers that act of forgiveness as condonation of her offense. He cannot afterward use that misconduct as a ground for divorce. The law treats this other question in much the same way. If a man knows that his sweetheart has been indiscreet in the past but nevertheless asks her to marry him, his act is in itself a waiver or condonation that will thereafter prevent him from escaping the obigations of an engagement of marriage. For example: The defendant who himself "had sown wild oats", as the saying goes, had known the plaintiff for some years as a girl who had also sown her wild oats. He knew, for instance, that she had eloped with a man and had lived with him for some months without being married. Notwithstanding these facts he began to keep company with the plaintiff. The girl soon fell deeply in love with him. They became engaged to be married. All went happily for a time. It was not until dissensions developed between this very sophisticated couple that the defendant began to repent of his engagement. The plaintiff's exactions and jealousy were no doubt the chief causes of the breach of the engagement. The plaintiff sued for breach of promise. The defendant endeavored to set up the woman's misconduct previous to the engagement as exoneration for his own action in breaking the engagement. The court held that the defendant was in no way deceived in the woman. He knew that she was "damaged goods" when he asked her to marry him. While she would not be able to recover the same amount of damages that a virtuous and proper maiden might be awarded for such a breach, yet the defendant was liable to her for breach of promise.