WOMEN MUST WEEP

NZ Truth, Issue 1150, 15 December 1927, Page 9

WOMEN MUST WEEP

A Girl JWife Seeks ~,'/'■. '' ' * Maintenance 'CProm "N.Z. Truth's" Special Auckland • Rep.) There seemed to be no animosity 4. In the dark bright eyes of Grace 'Evelyn Jones, a neat little nine-teen-year-old wife, as she sat not / six feet away gazing up into the faoe of her big, handsome, young husband in the witness-box. .". IJE was undergoing the troubles of ** answering a few pointed questions from his wife's counsel, Lawyer Les. Adamß, who was endeavoring to impress upon Magistrate , McKean that Ivan Henry Jones was a very delinquent husband. ... It was the second phase of another Of life's seemingly endless domestic tragedies. But nineteen years of age. the wife, on entering the court, placed into the arms of a friend, a bonny infant.- • * MUST LIVE It was not the unfortunate, girl's first request from the same court, for only as far back as September 9, she had asked the same judicial source to give her an order for maintenance. She received it. That is—she secured the order for £2 a. week, but it failed to materialize in the. way that is necessary to keep a young wife and infant child from calling at the' door of the Charitable Aid Board. It was to save herself this humiliation, unhappy C4race came again to Magistrate McKean. Wayward Ivan, it was said, had only paid her £3 10s., and she could not carry on. - The young husband stressed the argument that a man cannot pay what he has "not got. He had been working as a taxi-driver, but had only made sums like 35/-, £2, and 37/6 a week. He had been out of work for four ■weeks or more. The suit he was wearing was the only one he had to his name. Counsel: Where are you working now?'—With my father at. £4 a week.. Is; not your father the owner, of the Auckland Auctioneering- Company?— No,; only the auctioneer. Defendant detailed the expenditure of his weekly wages. He had, he said, to pay so much for this and so much 'for that, and he found it hard to,carry on.'". "Are you not living with your I people?" asked-the lawyer on hearing | board mentioned in the list of payments; "Yes," > . And, are you paying any board?— ! Tea, and isn't it a fair thing that I should do so? Counsel (snapplngly): And is it not • a fair thing that you should keep your 1 wife and child? A FAIR THING? Reference was made to a recent civil claim against the defendant when, as the counsol put it, the magistrate was influenced by the defendant pleading that he was unable to pay owing to his obligation through the court to his wife., Ivan Jones'fluked past the kind of order that holds the noose of a term of imprisonment over his head in the •vent of failing to comply, when the S.M. adjourned the case sine die to be brought up in three days' notice if the existing order is not kept paid up with a Chip of 2/6 off the arrears.