WAR BRIDE IN COURT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2047, 28 October 1919, Page 3

WAR BRIDE IN COURT.

APPLIES FOR SEPARATION,

The short married life of a New Zealand soldier and his English war" bride, which, according to the latter, had been marked with continual assaults and insults, came to a climax in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court on Friday, when the wife applied before Mr C. E. Cullen, S.M., for separation and maintenance. The parties to the action wore Margaret Durrani (Mr Me Liver) and Percy James Durrani (Mr Singer), plumber, of Grey Lynn. The complainant, a neatly-dressed young woman, said she was married to the respondent —her second husband —in England on October of last year. They lived happily together in Tottenham Court Load until (he husband was called back to camp, and later she followed him to Torquay. It was there that she saw the first signs of her husband’s infidelity, and there the unhappiness commenced. Complainant characterised her husband’s attitude on the transport coming out as “not very kind,’’ as, though she was confined to her berth with illness, he did not visit her until ordered to do so by the military doctor. She said be played “two-up” and “crown and anchor” instead. The night before the vessel arrived at Wellington she asked him to leave off cleaning his buttons and to attend to her, but instead he “gave her a hiding.” Since their arrival in May her life had been continually unhappy, and a fortnight ago she had been obliged to leave home.

In cross-examination, complainant - denied that she was quick tempered, and discredited Mr Singer’s suggestion that she was of

Spanish or Italian descent. She also denied that the quarrel on the 'transport was due to her husband’s discovery that he was her second husband, and that she tried to belittle him in front of the hospital patients.

Mr Singer submit led that the husband had done all he could for the woman. Her object was to gel hack lo England, and the husband was not prepared to snppoft her if she left him. .11 was not a case of a man bringing an innocent girl from her people and leaving her stranded in a foreign country.

At this stage the magistrate said that owing to. ah urgent appointment he must pdjourn the case until this week.