DOCTOR STEALS WIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 261, 28 June 1932, Page 7

DOCTOR STEALS WIFE

HUSBAND ESTIMATES WOMAN AS VALUED AT FIVE HUNDRED. LEGAL DIFFERENCES. LONDON, June 10. Dr. Charles Searle, whom John Place, a Cambridge grocer's assistant, alleged had enticed his wife away, was ordered by a jury to pay the husband £500 damages, and costs for both actions, when the case was re-tried at Cambridge. The case attracted wide interest at •its first hearing, when England's bachelor Judge, Mr. Justice McCardie, found for the defendant, holding that a wife was at liberty to leave her husband, and adding. "A "wife is not a slave. Every good woman wishes to stand behind her husband, but the law suggests that she can leave him." At the appeal, when a Bench presided over by Mr. Justice Scrutton, a married man, and a father, reversed Mr. Justice McCardie's finding and granted a new trial, the presiding Judge said: "If there is to be a discussion on the relations of husbands and wives, it would come bettey from Judges who have more than a theoretical knowledge of husbands and "wives." Place's counsel declared that when he asked Dr. Searle's solieitors for £109 costs, ordered by the Court of Appeal, the answer was that Dr. Searle had gone to Afriea and taken every penny with him. "What kind of a man would act in such a cowardly fashion as to sell an enormously valuable practice for £4850 and bolt, leaving his wife, children, and friends, and go to Central Afriea, while this action was pending, unless he knew himself guilty ?" asked counsel. Mr. Justice Roche, in summing up, told the jury that it must not give exemplary damages, as that was not in accordance with the law, adding that it would be punishing +he person who had suffered most — Mrs. Searle. (yp