Spilling The Beans

NZ Truth, Issue 1149, 8 December 1927, Page 6

Spilling The Beans

Kelly Gang

(From "N.Z. Truth's!' Special Auckland Representative.)

A feeling of antagonism- on the very wedding day is not a happy augury for matrimonial futurity. About the Kellys, though, that allegation was made the other day.

TT was alleged that Gregory Kelly had ■^ accepted the hospitality of his wife's parents and abUßed It tO the extent of incurring their wrath. At all events, Nellie Kelly lives with her parents and refuses to share her life with Gregory. There had been a feeling ..of antagonism, said Lawyer Conlan, even at the wedding; the trouble was due to parental influence on the girl's side, and there was no reason for an order from the court.

Neither cruelty nor drunkenness were m question, Magistrate Cutten was told, but the young wife was under the domination of her parents, and the feeling of antagonism was so great that she must make her choice between him' and her parents. On hearing this statement, Lawyer Inder, for the wife, took the opportunity to say that the whole affair was due to Kelly's abuse of the hospitality which he had received from Nellie's parents. The home which he said he had provided at Point Chevalier was only orie room and he neglected his wife, drank with his friends, and went to football matches, coming m too late for meals. Kelly had threatened to strike his

wife, but he had refrained from doing so, saying that if he did she would "have the wood on him."

Moreover, he had'*made a remark to his father-in-law which was, to say the least of it, lacking m chivalry ana reflected on the honor of his young wife, and, added Nellie's counsel, "the father gave him what was coming to him and knocked him down." In extenuation, Kelly's lawyer replied that Nellie's father had said that he would not have anything to do with the man who had sullied his daughter's honor. Having heard the overture, so to speak, Magistrate Cutten said that he had a recollection of the case and he would retire from the bench and refresh his memory by reading over the evidence of the former hearing. On the return of his worship, Lawyer Conlan put his client m the wit-ness-box and defendant stated that his was not the only unpleasantness m the family. There was another row with a son-in-law m the family of his wife's parents. Kelly denied ill-using his wife. She, on one occasion, threw a cup of tea over him and he called her a "little ."

It hurt him, too, that she had torn up two wedding groups which had cost

7/6 each. "I never struck her and that is the truth; I've tried to get her back," he said. "What's the stumbling cloak*" asttI ed Lawyer Conlan. -"The mother-in-law," was tlie reply. "They're the worst crowd I've ever come into contact with." Kelly did not deny, under Lawyer Inder's cross-examination, that he had cancelled the arrangements for the nursing home when the baby was expected; it was on the advice of a lawyer named Gallagher. He had never hurt his wife. When she threw the cup of tea over him he had caught her round the waist, but he could not say if it had bruised her. Her mother said it had, and he added: "What her mother says, goes, believe me." Kelly and his mother- in- law don't mix, he made that very evident: "The mother-in-law can't talk two minutes but

she goes up m the air."

Referring to the incident of- the brush with his father-in-law, he denied that he had made a certain remark which was not flattering to the girl he had married, but, though he qualified his reply, on actual words they still had an unpleasant inference, and so the girl's father must have thought, for as Kelly said: "Then he hit me." "I well remember the surprise it was to me when he was married," announced a witness named Woodward who was called to tell what he knew of Kelly's character. Kelly had worked for him for eleven years, and he had never seen him the worse for drink, and "when you have a man work for you for eleven years you know him," he said.

"A good many of the faults m the husband are common to many husbands," said Magistrate Cutten. He referred to the reflex feelings of the wife's parents, but considered that the parties had no business to be apart. "The husband's contentions put forward by his counsel are entirely right, and all I can do is to make an order of 15/- a week -for the child." "That's very low," commented Lawyer Inder. "I admit it," was the terse rejoinder from the bench, and when he was asked to make an order for the father to have access to the child the wise man on the bench expressed his disapproval: "They will have to meet at j the grandparents and that is danger - I ous to a reconciliation."