In re Susanna Bedlake Prowse, late of Fore-street Hill, Exeter, spinster, a draper’s apprentice ; previously of Torquay, spinster; and formerly of No. 14, Buckland Street, Plymouth, lodging-house-keeper, (with her mother, Susanna Prowse).— The insolvent applied for her discharge from the Devon County Prison, where she had been detained since the 1st of January, at the suit of George Down Mayne, for £60 1s. and costs and interest. In her balance-sheet insolvent said she was entitled, after the death of her mother, under the will of her (insolvent’s) grandfather, Edward Bedlake, to one-eighth part of certain property, valued at £400 ; she never carried on or followed any business or profession, but had lived with her mother, assisting in her business of a lodging-house-keeper, for which she received her maintenance and other necessaries ; between 1852 and 1857 she incurred liabilities for debts owing by her mother, and executed charges to the extent of £1,222 8s. 11d. on her (insolvent’s) reversionary interest in her grandfather’s property; in 1858 insolvent’s friends paid £1210s. as premium for her to learn the business a draper and milliner, and to receive her board and lodgings for three years; she had been supplied her friends with the means of purchasing articles of dress, Insolvent set down as the aggregate amount of her debts £1,222 8s. 11d., but added that she had received no consideration for any of these; assets (doubtful debts) £1,228 8s. 11d. ‘She accounted for her insolvency as follows : My having become security for my mother for debts owing by her, and having assigned the whole of my reversionary property to the creditors without receiving any security or consideration for the same.” —Mr. Toby supported the insolvent, a young person of genteel appearance, who was opposed by Mr. Laidman, for the detaining creditor, who it appeared was the secretary to a loan society. The grounds of opposition were that insolvent had contracted the detaining creditor’s debt without having probable means of paying it, and that she had concealed her property ; but it appeared that she had never contracted any debt nor had any property. She obtained the loan through Mr. Mayne for her mother, and gave bill of sale of her mother’s property to Mr. Hatch, who knew how matters stood with her, to prevent her father, who had been living apart from her mother, from sweeping off the furniture belonging to the latter.—His Honour declared insolvent entitled to the benefit of the act, and ordered her to be discharged from custody forthwith. —She left the court with her friends.
