Melksham Times Past

A column about days gone by in Melksham by local historian Lisa Ellis

Ten Years Too Long to Wait

The hearing started Saturday afternoon in November 1916 and went well into the evening, including several long speeches and a lot of testimony. 

The bench was hearing a breach of promise of marriage case brought by a woman against her former fiancé; she sought to recover £200 in damages.

Edwin Horace Rosier (“Ted”) defended himself by stating that, after 10 years of being engaged, he got tired of waiting for Elsie Mabel Smith-Keen to set a date. So, he broke off the engagement.

Rosier counterclaimed for £60, money he alleged he had paid to Smith-Keen in small increments for her to set aside for their wedding.

Rosier’s counsel, in his opening remarks, stated the prospective groom’s side, “The plaintiff lived at Melksham and assisted her father at his boot shop and in other work. The defendant was an engineer’s plater living at Melksham, and he earned good wages, and occupied a respectable position. From December 1907 to August 1916, all between them went as merrily as a marriage bell. But there was a flaw in this bell, it was cracked. In that time, they were constantly in each other’s society. He was at her home, called her parents Pa and Ma, or other anticipatory titles, and I have no doubt the young man enjoyed himself in the house a material sense as well as from the company of the young lady. They wrote few letters. In August last there was an idea of their going to Weymouth for a holiday with a relative as chaperone. That broke down, but the young man, being given a few days leave, went by himself to Walsall, where his mother lived. Before leaving he asked, ‘What shall I bring you?’ And the lady replied, ‘A parrot’.”

The fact he didn’t bring his fiancé a parrot caused an argument, crescendoing to a point in which he told her to go to the devil. She then went to her father, Jesse Smith-Keen, who got involved in the altercation; words were exchanged and the elder Smith-Keen knocked Rosier down.

Even after the altercation, the engagement had not officially broken off, and Miss Smith-Keen’s recounting of her side stated that after a week went by she saw Rosier with another girl. Her contention was that she had never refused to marry Rosier, but she wasn’t ready to marry him after she saw him walking out with another girl.

Cross-examined, she
was challenged by statements by a number of people that she had told them that she did not want to get married because she had a good home, a father to look after her and because she liked her freedom. These statements she denied saying. She also denied telling a neighbour that she had all of Rosier’s money and never intended to marry him. She’d never told others that Rosier was giving her money to put away for him. In 1914 there was talk of the defendant joining the Army, but ‘he was not man enough’.

Rosier maintained that he had asked her several times to name a date for the wedding but she always put it off. Her excuse had been that she would marry no one until he owned a house, had it furnished, and had £200 in the bank. On another occasion she said she was in no hurry; she had seen enough of people with kids about them, and she was going to enjoy life.

The judge confessed he was glad to not have to decide the complicated case and the jury deliberated for several hours. In the end, it was decided there was a breach of promise and the to-be bride was awarded £15. But the to-be groom was entitled to the money he had given her to save for their wedding, £60.

Afterwards, Ted Rosier moved from Nottingham and married Ada Garland in 1923. Elsie Smith-Keen, on the other hand, remained, not only in Melksham, but single. In fact, her brother Percy and sister Ethel (“Gyp”) never married either. With their parents, they all lived in Avon House on Bath Road.

Their parents died in the mid-1930s, Percy died in 1941 and both Elsie and Ethel remained in Avon House until their deaths in the early 1970s.

Pictured: Jesse and Percy Smith-Keen in front of their shoe shop at 43 Bath Road c 1915