The Norfolk Post

More "SOCIETY."

The Strong vs Strong case is still pending before the New York court. The defense for the lady has been opened. It attracts uncommon attention. But they have another divorce case up, which, like the Strong case, is a fight for money. The New York correspondent of the Baltimore Transcript gives the story:-

A very remarkable suit for damages is now pending in the city court of Brooklyn, which in its various developments has a vein of romance sufficient to make the fortune of a novelist. The parties of the suit are Mary Walker, a comely looking woman, 26 years of age, who works for a living in Brooklyn, and James Leach, a well known New York merchant, who keeps two large stores in Nassau street. It appears that in 1859, the defendant was employed as a porter in a hotel in this city, and Mary Walker as seamstress. After a short acquaintance, James was smitten with the charms of Miss Walker, and she in turn reciprocated the feeling. They got married at last, and had a good time at the wedding. The next morning, however, the twain found out to their disgust that they had no money, but determined to raise the wind somehow, and each went out trying to borrow some capital. The wife succeeded in obtaining $5 from a friend and the husband $3. With this capital of $8 they bought a barrel of apples, with which they decided to set up an apple-stand. Soon after, Mrs. Leach, neat and tidy-looking, was behind her basket of tempting apples, near the Nassau street post-office. After a while the habitues of the street began to recognize the familiar face of Mrs. Leach, at her daily station, and her sales became so large that her husband, finding the capital in his hands amounting to $50 became ambitious for a wider sphere of operations and enlarged the apple-stand by the addition of purchases of several kinds of knick-knacks, and these also found a ready sale. Husband and wife attended daily to the sales and lived most agreeably together, until at the end of three years they had saved the sum of $15,000. At this time, however, the prosperous husband began to act coolly towards her. From that time he got control of the business, and his conduct became so much changed until it finally culminated in a course of brutal treatment which induced her to ask for a divorce. The husband in the meantime had produced proof that his marriage with Mary had been null and void, as he had been married in England, long before he started for this country. Mrs. Leach now not only asks for divorce but brings a suit for damages, for the alleged fraud perpetrated on her by the defendant in representing himself as a single man, and having her services for three years, when he was aware all the time he had a wife living.