Beat Your Wife But Not With Iron Bar!

Chronicle (Levin), 10 September 1949, Page 7

Beat Your Wife But Not With Iron Bar!

AUCKLAND, Sept. 9. Addressing an elderly Maori who. pleaded guilty at Kaitaia, North Auckland, yesterday to a charge of assaulting his wife, the Magistrate, Mr. W. Carol Harley, said instead of using an iron bar to beat his wife he should. have told his wife she had done wrong; and then taken a reasonably sized stick! and beaten her. , The Magistrate, fiped the Maori .£2, ordered hiin to pay. £-1 Court costs and other costs totallipg £4 6s 8d. ' ihe police ,stated that an argumpnt afpse over the wife.'s alleged relatibnship with another man. . i Speaking through an interpreter .the Magistrate said: "I think it proper that at times a man does beat his wif?,' and the Bible supports that statement. But it. must be done as a service of love, not in a temper." Mr. Harley told an Auckland Star reporter in a telephone interview today that his remarks were for "primitive Maoris'' of whoim there were stili some in North Auckland. Their customs would nofc change nntil they reached a higher standard. ' 'My comments," he said, "might sound extraordinary in Auckland— in the Soutlf- Island you hiight be lynched for making them — but you must get the atmosphere.'" Mr. Harley added that in parts of North Auckland some Maoris were very primitive — milqs behind us — and where there were no police they kept their own discipline according to their | own customs. Wife beating was a nor- : mai set-up, and it would not change until those particular Maoris came up to a higher standard. A well-known Auckland barrister lnterviewed today said: "The law is the sanie for a Maori as for a pakeha. The , fact that a Maori adheres to savage ; customs cannot be justified in the eyes 1 of the law. ' ' The hlaori or pakeha was only entitled to hit his wife in selfdefence, otherwise he could be charged with assault or bound over to keep the peace, Wife beating or persistent cruelty was a ground for divorce or separation. Quoting Sir William Blackstone, the ' famous English jurist, the, Auckland I lawyer added: "The law today is that j a husband has no more 'privileges' so j far as wife beating is concerned than anybody else. ' '