STRANGE DIVORCE CASE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 44, 21 February 1914, Page 5

STRANGE DIVORCE CASE.

A BOGUS WEDDING. Mary Elizabeth Hossaok (09), or Hoddle-street, Clifton-hill, Melbourne, sought a divorce from William Alexander Hossack (56), of Wellingtou-par-ade, East Melbourne, before the Chief Justice recently, on the grounds ot desertion.

Petitioner gave evidence that she had known Hossack for about four vears when she first wont through the form of marriage with him. Long afterwards she discovered that the ceremony, which had been performed by a supposed Baptist’ minister, was no marriage at all. She kept the discovery a secret from dier parents at Hossack’s request. Hossack tried to get- her to continue to live with him without a legal mrriage, but she refused. Her father nad often told her that she ought to have her marriage lines, but when she asked Hossack for them, he put her off, and said he could not give them to her. Finally he went to Scotland to visit his mother, and on his return comessel to her that their marriage was not legal, and that she was not his wife. His Honor : And what did you do j then ? Witness said she told him that if he did not marry her she would take the child and fight the battle of life alone. Then he really married her. That was 18 years ago, and their subsequent life together was one long series of brutalities on his part. He repeatedly struck her,, and once knocked her against the mantelpiece, and cut her head open. Once he chased her with a loaded revolver. He was arrested and charged with threatening to murder her, but she withdrew the charge. One Sunday he shut the child and her in a lift and poured a kettle of boiling water over them. In 1910 he went away, and she became a nurse.

His Honor said that, while the wife appeared to be industrious and respectable, the husband was lazy and unscrupulous. A decree nisi wa.-. granted.