Divorce in England

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1028, 19 July 1930, Page 18

Divorce in England

' il ESPITE the fact that the House of Commons has at last consented to consider making incurable ■j 1 ' AT) insanity a ground for ' ■ ill ir divorce, it is a sad fact that th© British divorce taws are far behind those of other countries and most of the Dominions (writes E. Roffe Thompson in an English magazine).

I use the word "sad” deliberately, and I use it for a reason that few people ever think about, and fewer still ever state. For the real suf ferers from unhappy and often utterly impossible marriages are the children. who, too young and helpless to defend themselves, are left at the mercy of circumstances which all too often result in their mental and spiritual stunting, and not infrequently in their actual degradation.

When those who are trying to secure the long-overdue reform of the divorce laws are accused of trying to break up marriage and rende- ” ren homeless and parentless, their accusers might think of the jus. thousands of little children under the present system—and then think again. Sir Robert Harr, who as a director of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children may be presumed to know what he was talking about, gave evidence before the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce that sat as long ago as 1909. and this is what he said:

“There are grave questions arising out of the physical and mental sufferings of the children and the unhappy influences surrounding their lives. I have known many cases where children, quite small children, have got up in the middle of the night and have been found by our Inspectors Jn the streets, terrified as the result of bru tality inflicted by the husband on the wife.”

That is a point of view that has been lost sight of too .long. How utterly irrational is the complicated knot of our idiotic divorce laws was recently shown by the biting sarcasm

Mr. Justice Hill poured on then wtas he was dealing with the case c 4 i wife to whom, in the present stats el the law, he could only grant a jndici separation—that lamest of legal «• vices for avoiding the humane » ministration of true justice. "If,” ho said, "she had proved tit her husband had committed one ailf act of misconduct she would hare bw entitled to a dissolution of the ns riage; but as she has only piwt that he is a drunken beast who tr treated her with the utmost braulfc the law does not allow her to have is marriage dissolved.” Now. which is really the more mot--—to dissolve a marriage that ha» become nothing but a mockery aai * sham, or to force the unhappy coepto go on keeping up the appearing of marriage, but condemning the*» reality to hypocrisy, shame and ofteopen immorality? Which coarse - more likely to result in a healthy St tional life? Consider! There are more tint 60,000 married and incurable luuao:iu our asylums—but that Is, as J*no legal ground for divorce. I have kept for some years a P*d tic letter which has always to me to sum up the whole against the present state of the 1* During the war an English married a Canadian soldier. year or two he deserted her and back to Canada, leaving her on brink of motherhood and entira. penniless. Her parents took home, where her baby girl wasw® My daughter (wrote the wife's mother to me) Is delicate a® cannot earn her living; but *bat ries us most is that if she were die the man could at any time up and cany off our granddaug® for he is. it seems, her legal ga* despite his desertion. man we know well who has been love with my daughter for years, and he keeps offering to her for better or for worse. ‘ know what to advise her to dO--long as me and my old man are I there is always a home for BW her child; but we are poor ana not possibly save to provide to future. I'd die easier if I knew had a good man to stand UP ‘"L,and the little one against the » who ruined her life- v g There, in just one case ,_{ incredible number, is the stars_ edy of the inhumanity of laws. And nothing is done— •* cruel suffering goes on. The Royal Commission commended by a large as well as the ground °‘Jv.hocother valid grounds for be (a) desertion for three ya*“*’j tP . cruelty, (c) Incurable insanity five years' confinement, (d)gjjg drunkenness found incurahts throe years, and (e) life under a commuted deaia tence. v That we have failed in -1 - give effect to these propose* no very great credit t° oß ' , nianship. Neither does It Jo' ff great reason to be proud of eff*® morality or our justice.