The unemployed grocer and a lady solicitor

A case from 1930s Lincolnshire saw a man determined to avoid paying his wife maintenance. Cue the involvement of a lady solicitor and a private detective...

In 1930s Lincolnshire, one private detective played a small role in a very long drawn out marital case that also involved the first appearance of a female solicitor in Horncastle's police court.

George Frederick Borrell was from Grimsby, born there in 1879, and was for many years a policeman in the town, having joined by the age of 21. By 1921, he had separated from his wife Florence, and he was living with his widowed mother and his three children, the youngest of whom was only ten years old.

He then left the police, moved into a new home in Grimsby, and started a new business as a private detective to support himself and his children. In around 1933, he was commissioned by a local grocer, George Harold Brown, to investigate Brown's wife.

Grimsby, home of private detective George Borrell

George Brown was in his early 30s at this point. He had married Lucy Mary Coulton, who was five years his senior, in 1919. The couple had a daughter, Eileen, in 1923, but five years later, George and Lucy split up. George started a new relationship with Frances Spence, and Lucy and their daughter moved in with Lucy's brother Sidney. They reached a maintenance agreement, and for the next five years, George paid his wife and daughter on a fairly regular basis. However, in 1933, the payments stopped. When the arrears reached nearly £400, Lucy Brown told him that if he didn't pay up, she would take him to court.

Her husband did everything to avoid paying, and commissioned George Borrell to investigate Lucy, asking him to find evidence that she had been committing adultery - despite the fact that it was he who was, openly living with another woman, and having a further two daughters by her (confusingly, their elder daughter was given the same first name as George's daughter by his wife). In 1935, the case reached Horncastle Police Court, where the evidence would be discussed.

In the court case, Lucy was represented by Richard Chatterton - who was a tenacious solicitor, and one who would become repeatedly frustrated at Brown. Brown in turn commissioned the firm of Messrs Brown and Son, Grimsby solicitors, to represent him. This was a firm started by Henry Waudby Brown, a Hull-born solicitor, with his son William Waudby Brown being the 'Son' in the firm's name. However, it was William's older sister who would represent George Brown in court: and she would be the first female solicitor to appear in Horncastle Police Court.

George's solicitor was Mary Alice Brown, who was 25 years old when she appeared in court. She was representing a man with dubious morals, who would do anything to avoid paying maintenance to his wife and daughter. When the parties appeared in court in July 1935, it was clear that they would also be doing anything to delay matters.

George Borrell appeared in court to ask for an adjournment, so that he could question two witnesses. He had only 'discovered certain evidence' the night before, he said, in relation to Lucy Brown's 'movements and associations'. George Brown was very happy with his inquiries, but he needed to find more evidence, and he had not seen the two witnesses yet, as they had not been available the previous night. He was challenged by Mr Chatterton as to why, when he had made five earlier series of inquiries, these two witnesses had only emerged 'at the eleventh hour'. Borrell was unperturbed:

"What we learned last night confirms what we had already been told. This is such an isolated district, and as a result of previous inquiries, we decided to see a man I had [already] spoken to."

Borrell was asked to name the man in question by Chatterton, but the lady solicitor objected. He was instead asked if it was 'concerning a certain man', and Borrell responded:

"Yes, it was learned he has been associating with Mrs Brown in country lanes at night."

Chatterton got increasingly cross as Borrell's evidence (or lack of it) was made. He accused Mary Alice Brown of delaying tactics, in order for George Brown to avoid paying maintenance. Borrell's insistence that he needed more time to find proof of adultery was clearly part of this, made in collusion with the other parties. However, Borrell was allowed a week more to find his evidence.

The continuance of the case over the next three years made it clear that these were indeed delaying tactics. There was no evidence that Lucy Brown had committed adultery, so now George Brown tried a new tactic. When the court had met again following the week's adjournment, an order had been made for George to pay his wife £1 a week, and his child five shillings. Within eight weeks, George had left his job. Initially, he made Lucy Brown some payments from his unemployment benefit, and then started selling bits of furniture.

An early 20th century grocer’s shop. George Brown was a grocer, but faced a long period of unemployment

By December 1937, though, he was appearing in court to ask for a suspension of his maintenance order, claiming to be 'entirely unable' to pay anything. He was solely dependent on grants from the Unemployed Assistance Board, and these barely kept his second family afloat. His lover, Frances Spence, had for a while taken washing in to eke out a living, but she was now in poor health and had been told by her doctor not to work 'for a year'. He was 'not living, but only existing'. His solicitor - no longer Mary Alice Brown - told the magistrate that George should not be 'forced to abandon the woman he is living with and the two children' because they had 'lived happily together for ten years'.

Lucy Brown was still being represented by Richard Chatterton, who reminded the court that Brown had earlier tried everything to avoid paying his wife, telling others that he would be able to "get out of it". But the court believed the struggles of George Brown, who had now been unemployed for 16 months, and suspended the maintenance order for two months. When the case came back to court in February 1938, Brown didn't even appear, claiming he was too poor to find transport to the police court. He was still not working, and Miss Spence and his children had all been ill.

In the past two months, he had found six day's work as a temporary postman, but that was it. Poor Mr Chatterton noted that Brown, as a former grocer, seemed to believe that the only work he should try and get was as a grocer. However, he now recognised that it was pointless trying to get Brown to pay a decent amount to maintain his legal family, and so it was agreed that Brown could pay a 'nominal' amount of a shilling a week. If he ever got a job again, Lucy Brown would have to bring the case back to court to argue for an increase. The arrears were also adjourned.

By 1939, Lucy Brown was still living with her younger brother Sidney at his farm in Horncastle. George Brown was still unemployed, living with Frances and their two daughters on First Avenue in Grimsby. George Borrell was still working as a private detective, living with his children and a female housekeeper elsewhere in Grimsby; in 1941, on the death of his first wife, Borrell would marry his housekeeper. He died in Grimsby six years later.

And what of the Browns? Lucy Mary Brown died in Horncastle in 1968, aged 73. Almost immediately afterwards, George Brown finally married Frances Spence - 40 years after the couple started their relationship - and they would enjoy a further 16 years together before he died, at the grand age of 93. How much George had actually paid Lucy in maintenance over the course of those 40 years before she died is not known.