“TOO FOND OF DANCE-MAD WIFE.”

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 339, 21 January 1937, Page 8

“TOO FOND OF DANCE-MAD WIFE.”

HUSBAND DENIES HE WAS CRUEL. COUPLE’S LIFE IN CANADA. “I am too fond of my wife. That is the trouble. She is dancing mad. All she wants is a separation so that she can get back to her home in Hull —and to her dancing.” So declared a Civil Servant, Henry Richard Major, of Putney, in the South-Western Matrimonial Court, where his wife charged him with persistent cruelty and assault. Six years ago Mrs Doris Irene Major, Farnborough, Hants, an attractive blonde, winner of a diploma in the British Ballroom Amateur Dancing Championship, married her husband. Three years of the early married life of the couple were spent in China. They have a two-year-old son. Lived in Terror. In court Mrs Major told the magistrate, “I have lived in terror of mj husband.” Denying she was “dancing mad,” she mid, “I like dancing, but I don't make t the ruling passion of my life.” “One night,” she declared, “while we were in China I found my husband looking through a window at two girls who were undressing in the house opposite. He was angry because I had caught him. “He grabbed hold of me, but I managed to get away and out of the house. [ had to walk at midnight through the Chinese streets alone. Even then [ was more afraid of my husband than of the Chinese.”

Mrs Major alleged that her husband forced her into writing a letter while in China stating she had left him of her own free will. The letter read: “I am sorry I can’t stand it any longer. I am leaving of my own free will, and I don’t want any money or to be under any obligation to you. I hope you will look after the lad as best you can.” “I Don’t Trust Her.” Mrs Major came back to Englanc three years before her husband, wh< returned on leave last September. Only a few weeks after his return, follow, ing a dance at Putney, Mrs Major al. leged that he tried to strangle he’ after a quarrel over a £6O set of jad< he had bought her and that had nov been pawned. The husband said once he found tha his wife had been to a dance at i Hongkong hotel while he was on nigh duty. “I didn’t know until three day after,” he went on. “I had alway warned her not to go out without m in China.’ “Out there, there is only one womai to ten men, and women easily ge 6wept off their feet and disappear.” He said he did not trust her afte: that. His wife, he declared, became borel with China. He had never been crue to her. The magistrate, Mr Claud Mullins dismissed the summonses.