MARRIAGE WITH SISTER-IN-LAW

Hokitika Guardian, 10 June 1920, Page 4

MARRIAGE WITH SISTER-IN-LAW

A SCIENTIFIC VIEW

UY'Dll. LEONARD WILLIAMS

Lady Astor’s question in the House ®f Commons on tho subject of the marriage of a woman with her dead husband’s brother recalls a time-honoured but now exploded fallacy. It used to be believed that it was uneugonie for a woman to beget children by her dead Husband’s brother, assuming, that is, that she bad a family by her first husband.

Whence this idea arose it is now very difficult to say. 1 It is probably the extension, th'ough surely a muddled one, of the belief that the sire of a first offspring or litter loft so indelible an imprint upon the flam that all subsequent progeny, even though diversely fathered, were liable to revert in type to the original sire.

This was certainly believed in the matter of dog-breeding, and in country districts the legend still holds. It was also believed in the matter of horse-breeding, and there are still scientific and experienced horse-breeders who would not care to undertake any risk in this direction. In the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica there is a long article explaining that this belief is entirely mistaken.

But even if thlis belief be true in the case of animals, it is difficult to understand what the objection can be to the marriage between a woman and her dead husband’s brother. For even if the children of such a union did resemble -the first husband, there would be nothing objectionable in such a result. If we go back to the period of Moses, who was one of the greatest sanitarians that ever lived, we find tfyit, so far from there being- any impediment to the mar* ringe of a woman with her deceased husband’s brother, such unions were definitely encouraged, and we vend in Deuteronomy xxr... f), that a widow has the right to claim her bachelor brother-in-law as her second/ husband, and that if he is iffigallarit enough to refuse the lady’s blushing offer, she has the right publicly to loose his shoes from off’ his foot and spit in his face.’-’ 'lt would seem therefore that Lady Astor has the highest scientific arid religious support for her endeavour to get the absurd rule prohibiting the marriage of a woman with her deceased husband’s brother removed from the Statue Book.