ISN'T IT A LOTTERY?

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 294, 6 August 1932, Page 6

ISN'T IT A LOTTERY?

YANKEE REASON FOR DIVORCE COURT PETITIONS. Cynics have always held that marriage is a lottery, and the following liashes from the American courts, reported by the British United Press the other day, seern to show that they are right. Claiming that her husband threw some jelly at her — without removing it from the bowl — Mrs. Lucian Smart filed a suit for divorce at Cambridge, Massaehusetts. Mrs. Mary Richter, suing her husband for divorce at Evansville, Indiana, complained that he sat at home and read the Bible while she was forced to sell magazines for a living. At the age of 86 Mr. Hiram H. Langford, former niayor of Newburyport, Massaehusetts, is being sued for £5000 damages on the allegacion that he alienated the affections of Mrs. Edward J. King, the 40-year- , old wife of a doughnut manufacturer. Mr. Samuel Gilbert, asking for' a

separation from his wife, told a Boston court that he taught her jiu-jitsu, so that she could defend herself if attacked. She learned so well, he declared, that she was ,soon able to throw him, and used jiu-jitsu on him "on six minor occasions and half a dozen major occasions." Perils of Bridge. New York police tell a story of how a no-trump bid at bridge was blamed for the death of the husband of Mrs. Sadie Osler, who had been arreseed pending an inquiry. When her husband berated her for reckless bidding during a game of bridge, state the police, Mrs. Osler threw a pair of scissors at him and inflicted an injury which became infected and proved fatal. Mrs. Nancy Elizabeth Doss, who is 75, has sued her two stepsons at Kansas City, Missouri, for the alleged alienation of the affections of her 82-year-old husband, Frank Schribner, from whom she was recently divorced. "When we were married he called me 'sugar lump,' and I called him 'Baby Doll'." she told the court in ts'iaiming £4000 damages from her stepsons, "but the day after the wedding his sons came and took him away, and when he returned he was cross and ugly." Desertion was the charge brought against Mr. Frank Ginger by his wife, though he had never moved out of their mutual home. Mrs. Ginger informed a Chicago divorce court that her husband had , cold her several years ago that she \ was dead as far as he was concerned. j He then moved into one room of their i house, where he had lived by himself, bringing in his own food and ignoring her. "I leave this world because I have been ruined by my wife and laws and courts that make the racket of alimony possible. . . I had the grief and my wife had the gravy. Goodbye, world, yo> see too much for me." This was the farewell letter left by Mr. Garfield J. Shiefernstein, a Chicao g 'estate agent, who committed suicide. Under a separation maintenance decree Mr. Shiefernstein, who had once been wealthy, had paid his wife £6500 in alimony in 13 years.