MARRIED AGAINST HIS WILL.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2716, 2 December 1881, Page 2

MARRIED AGAINST HIS WILL.

A divorce case, presenting some peculiar features, was brought before the Court recently at Sydney. The petitioner was, at the time of his marriage, a storekeeper in the employ of the proprietor of a station. The respondent the daughter of a Chinese cook and a European woman, was housemaid in the proprietor’s family, and about seventeen or eighteen years of age. The petitioner had known her four years. The day before the marriage the respondent’s father came into the store where the petitioner was, and said that his daughter was with child, and that the petitioner was the supposed father. The petitioner said that it might be and he was willing to support it when the child was born, to which the Chinaman replied, catching up a carving knife: “ You must marry my daughter, or I will stab you.” He added that if the petitioner did not send for a minister, he would do so himself. The petitioner seems to have made no reply to this, his reason being that he was frightened at the Chinaman, and as his arm was in a sling at the time, he was not prepared to make any resistance. Next evening he was sent for, and on going to the cook’s hut he found the Chinaman, his family, and a Presbyterian clergyman assembled there. He stated that he was then frightened into marrying the respondent, as her father repeated his former threats that he would kill him if he did not. He made no objection to the clergyman, and was married there and then, but never cohabited with his wife. Mr Justice Windeyer declined to dissolve tne marriage under the circumstances. The Court, he said, would not countenance the idea that marriages recklessly entered into between young, thoughtless, and vicious people might be as easily set aside as they were contrated.