IN DIVORCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 959, 25 February 1911, Page 4

IN DIVORCE.

Dunedin, February 23. Mr Justice Williams sat this morning to hear the divorce suit, Christina Morris v. Thomas Charles Morris, wife’s petition for dissolution of marriage on the ground of desertion. Mr Irwin, who appeared for petitioner, said the parties were married in 1893 and there were three children, the youngest fifteen years old. After the first six months of married life the parties did not get on well together. Respondent treated his wife with great cruelty and within four months of the birth of the third child he asassaulted her in such a way as to render her unconscious. After the child was born Morris, who was doing no work, suggested that she should go back to work (she had been a tailoress) and three weeks after the child she went to work. For a long time she was practically the sole support of the family on her earnings of from 25s to 30s a week. Morris did not attempt to get work and the wife continued working until her health became affected and then she went to the Dunedin Corporation and got her husband employment as a lamplighter. The wife afterwards did laundry work, making as much as £3 a week, but Morris, although in work and banking money, never gave her anything except an occasional half-crown. The respondent’s behaviour was bad, he having misbehaved himself with a girl in petitioner’s employ assisting in laundry work. He repeatedly knocked petitioner about and told her she was no use to him and the sooner she went the better. In 1904 she saved up and went away with her little children to an uncle in Masterton. There she was very ill and wrote to her husband asking for help, receiving in reply only abusive letters. The respondent was now a man of some property who had recently built a new house at South Dunedin. He never attempted to support his wife.

Petitioner (on oath) said that when her third child was born the nurse asked respondent to go for a doctor and he refused. His Honour announced that a case of constructive desertion had been made out and he made a decree nisi, with costs on the lowest scale against the respondent.