Scottish Court of Session Decisions

This was an advocation from the Sheriff Court of Dumfries, of an action of filiation and aliment at the instance of Alice Stoddart against Christopher Carruthers, both residing in the parish of Johnstone, Dumfriesshire. The Sheriff-Substitute (Trotter) decided in favour of the pursuer, but the Sheriff (Napier) altered and assoilized the defender.

The pursuer deponed that the defender was in the habit of visiting her at night, coming into her bed-room by the window, and that he had connection with her in her bed-room twice in July 1863. Her child was born in April 1864. She said that the defender's visits continued with frequency up to November, but that there was no connection after July. There was no proper corroboration of the pursuer's evidence. A man named Robert Jardine deponed that he saw the defender twice go in at the pursuer's window—“at least he was in with his head when he came away and left him.” Jardine said he had gone specially to watch the defender, and that he himself had gone in at the pursuer's window and been alone with her in her room about eighteen months before. Another witness, Jessie Thorburn, deponed that she had seen the defender, with his arms around the pursuer one night on the way from Moffat fair. This the defender denied.

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He also denied that he had ever entered by the pursuer's window, or had connection with her.

The Court, after hearing counsel for the pursuer repelled the reasons of advocation. They could place no faith in Jardine's evidence, and without it the pursuer had no case.