WHITE WIVES IN THE HAREM

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1789, 30 June 1913, Page 10

WHITE WIVES IN THE HAREM

LONDON GIRL'S FATE IN PERSIA. TRAVELLER'S WARNING. , London, April 30. Tho perils undergone by.whito women who marry coloured men were emphasised by Mr. Foster Eraser, the well-known Asiatic traveller,, in an interview yesterday. Theso dangers formed the subject of a warning recently issued by the Australian Government at the request cf the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Harcourt. This warning primarily concerned marriages with' tho l'athans and others of the hill tribes of the North-West Frontier of India, but Mr. Fraser extends the warning so as to include Mongols and Caucasians. "It is extraordinary," he said, "to find the number of white women who are in tho harems of Persia, for example. They are mostly English and American dancing girls who have met Persians who were travelling abroad, and, fascinated by tales of lifo in East3rn palaces, have married them. "When I was in Persia I came across a typical case. It' was that of a girl who had. been an attendant at a stall at tho ■Crystal Palace. Thero she was seen by a. Persian iij the entourage of Nasr-cd-Din, a previous Shall, when he visited this country. She married him according to Roman Catholic rites, and with her sister went to Persia with him. Once in his own country, however, he immediately placed her in the hiirem, where she found hebelf but one of several wives, and was forced to live in seclusion, cut off from her own people. She met only the Persian ladies of tho royal harem, to whom, curiously enough, sho used b translate Sir 'Arthur Conan Doyle's defective stories, in which they were greatly interested. , "Eventually her husband died, and sho desired to return io England, but many difficulties were placed in her way, and it was only by the persistent good offices of the wife of the British Minister that she was abjo to depart, taking with her her son, on the strict proviso that he returned to Persia when he was sixteen yeors of age. Subsequently, I believe, she married an Englishman, and now lives nt Pcckham. : "Marriages betweep Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, fihmese, or Persian men and white women arc rarely happy. The men from these nations who travel are naturally wealthy, and women who become fascinated l.y them .forget that they will have to live in a totally different atmosphere. An intolerable longing for hnmo comes to them, amlescape is impossible." !" As an example of the danger of mixed marriages to white women a recent case may be cited in which it was held that a white woman married in England was no longer the wife of a Siamese after she had been deserted for three months this process being sufficient for a husband to end his marriage in Siam, and the wife was bound by the laws of her husband's conntry.—'"Daily Mail."