LIFE WITH A CHINAMAN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3767, 1 June 1907, Page 3

LIFE WITH A CHINAMAN.

A Christchurch’s Girl’s Unhappy Marriage.

The trials and tribulations of a white woman who had married a Chinaman were unfolded at Christchurch recently, says Truth, when Ethel Tim Cheong complained toMrH. W. Bishop, S.M., that her husband, Tim Cheong, had failed to provide her with adequate means for maintenance. Mr Leathern stated that they had been married about four years, and in 1904 had obtained an order against Cheong, through Judge Haselden, then Stipendiary Magistrate at Christchurch, for 10s a week, but she later went back to live with him. He had always

: ill-treated her, and , had knocked * her about so much that she had to leave him again. Ethel Lim Cheong, a, dark girl of 22 years, with a sallow complexion and an expression on her face that gave an impression that her experience with aliens had not been at all happy, said that she came to know defendant through working at his laundry about 1904. She was then a girl of 18 years of -age. They resolved to go to the Registrar and get married. They did not have the consent of her parents to the marriage, and her age was put down in the declaration as 21 years. She soon found that life with a Celestial was not a happy one, and quickly tired of the unappetising pork and rice which her spouse lived on ; also of the treatment meted out to her. After the Court made the order mentioned by Mr Leathern, she

was persuaded by her father to re- / turn to the abode of him Cheong, / on the understanding that he would reform and give her money. She lived there for a little while, but was again forced to leave him, as he persisted in ill-treating her. She was now living with her sister. He had had two white girls living with him since then. She expected to be treated like a European, instead of a Chinese woman, when she married defendant. He had never given her any clothes, and her wardrobe only contained two dresses, including her wedding dress. Lim Cheong had sold his laundry, and was going to Lyttelton to take a shop in London street, in partnership with another Chinaman, and subsequently back to China. The Magistrate : Why did you marry a Chinaman, and what did you expect when you married him ?

Witness: I expected some proper food. Continuing, the witness said that he gave her no money at all, but spent it all in pak-a-poo and gambling. She knew she was foolish to marry him. “Foolish girl,” remarked the Magistrate, “to do that sort of thing. You have made your bed, and now you have,to lie on it.” The defendant stated he had treated her properly, but she, on the other hand, had assaulted him. He did not know she was so young when he married her. ‘ ‘ Ask him what he feeds her on ?” said the Magistrate. “On any thing,” replied the Celestial. “When she wants mutton or rump steak I buy it for her at Bd. per lb.” The Megistrate then asked plaintiff if she wrote a letter handed into the Court by the Chinaman, which she denied. The Magistrate said they knew perfectly well that they had no right to marry, but it was no use sermonising about the position. He would make an order for 10s a week.