VALUE OF A WIFE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5355, 23 November 1928, Page 3

VALUE OF A WIFE.

EXPRESSIONS IN LAIR VIEWS PUT ON CASH BASIS. According to Mr justice Hill, when a man loses his wife the damage can not be expressed in cadi (says a writer in the Dominion). Most of us will agree with him, but, as a matter of fact, in this hard and commercial world there is . little that cannot be put on a cash basis; in the case before Mr Justice Hill £5OOO damages probably nowhere near met the case. However, it is recorded that one Lord Chief Justice assessed the value <ojf a woman as a wife at the somewhat low value of though the husband was only claiming a modest two hundred pounds. Juries arq just as indecisive in this respect, for whilst they have at times put the cash value of a faithless wife at 000, others have declared he? - , to be worth not more than a farthing. Lord Birkenhead, in one of his first divor c e •court briefs, managed to get £lo,ooo' for, a husband for th© loss of his wife. Whep it comes to limbs, the market is steadier. A golf club gnoundlsman Was. recently awarded £2OOO, whilst a •man of nearly seventy who lost a leg in a motor accident was granted £lOOO. The loss of two .Arms and a leg have resulted in £6OOO being paid over, to a luckless victim of a railway accident. The loss of both eyes has been valued at £BOOO in the jaw courts, which is. £3OOO more than Professor Huxley’s estimate of the va.luc of his owp sigjht, when he insured! against blindness for. £5OOO and became .the first man in Britain to db so. When afdog bit the cheek of a pnetty girl in Geneva, thereby causing unsightly disfigurement, counsel for the defence contended that it would develop into a fascinating, dimple. But the count held different views. The owner of the dbg had to pay £8 for medical expenses, £4O for the suffering undergone, and no less than £soo' for “matrimonial depreciation.”