CALLOUS HUSBAND

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 45, 16 November 1937, Page 3

CALLOUS HUSBAND

Suggested Wife's Suicide "CADDISH AND DISGRACEFUL" Twenty-se-ven-year-old Elizabeth Barton, i,u |j:ver]tool Hospital after an atleged atien.pt at suicide, told a dotectivTe ^hat hej husband had said to her.- "Why drn't you gas yourself and get yourself out of my road?" She alleged that he once asked^for money saying that he ' ' wanted to take his girl out." She alsj found a letter to him in which a girl had written: — ' ' Why ' don't you tell your wife about us? . . . I could make & sweeter wife than she, have children as weli ... " Mrs, Barton, appearing before Liverpool magisfra^es, said that she became vdistraught, thought she would i'nghtefi her husband, and sat in a chair with a gas tube in her mouth. 'i'hon, l-calisrng what she wa-s doing, she rusbcd to a neighbour's house. ' ' Is there no crime than cau be fastAned on the husband for suggesting suicide to his wife?" asked tho chairman of the Bench (Colonel Hemelryk.) "No," replied Mr W. Oulshaw, who was prosecuting. The cJiairmu.ii dismissed the charge of attempted suicide under the Probation of Offenders' Act, and said to the husband: — "Your conduct is beneath coutempt. You bave behaved in a shocking, caddish and disgraceful way. You ought to be in gaol. That is the only fit place for you. " ' • The Bench granted Mrs Barton a free summons against her husband for alleged persistent cruelty.