"Shocking Scandal; Remarkable Letters"

The Rev William Malam, vicar of St. John the Baptist, Buxton, began tutoring Miss Annie Rose in her Latin declensions in December 1883. An assistant schoolmistress, 24 year old Annie needed the Latin to advance. Malam was 58, quite well-respected and a rural dean in Derbyshire. There were at least ten tutoring sessions, mostly held in the vicar's home where he lived with his invalid wife. But for the one or two occasions when Malam called at Annie's little cottage set back from the road on College Place. That something took place during one of those visits was unquestioned. Rumors and anonymous letters soon swept Buxton. In August 1885, Rev. Malam filed a slander action against a young physician, Dr. Charles Bennett, seeking damages in the amount of £5000. Bennett had gone so far as to call the vicar “a beastly old fellow.” The doctor said he could prove that Malam had twice indecently assaulted Miss Rose.

The evidence consisted of a stack of Malam's letters to Annie, "My Dear Little Girl." He wrote, "From the first time I saw you, I liked you." But later, many of his letters were "abject" appeals for forgiveness. "Don't think so badly of me and forget a moment of weakness which, though reprehensible, is not to be classed with unforgiven offenses." He begged to see her again: "Believe me, you may trust in me. There will be no temptation in the same direction in the future." When she threatened to expose him, he wrote, "I implore you for my poor crippled wife's sake, to whom exposure would be death." The vicar had always told Annie to burn his letters; she did not.

The vicar's counsel insisted that Rev. Malam was "wholly unconscious" of having done anything wrong, other than a "playful" slap on one occasion. The act was "indiscreet" and nothing more. His letters were also imprudent but he was facing false and exaggerated claims. Dr. Bennett's motive? The physician and Miss Rose seem to have had a pre-existing "more or less intimate" relationship. 

No evidence was called and the counsel for Dr. Bennett said his client wished to unreservedly withdraw everything he ever said or wrote about Rev. Malam. He had been misled (by Annie?) and had acted from the purest motives unaffected by any animus towards the vicar.   

Mr. Justice Lopes was pleased that unseemly testimony had been avoided. But he added, "I cannot help saying" that Rev. Malam's letters to this young woman, for a man in his position and she in hers, "were certainly indiscreet." That clearly affected his Lordship's decision that Malam should receive damages in the rather paltry amount of 40 shillings. When Malam returned to Buxton from the trial in Liverpool, a band was waiting at the station to play "See the Conquering Hero Comes." He remained vicar in Buxton until his death in 1892.

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