WOMEN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 290, 30 April 1913, Page 6

WOMEN'S WORLD

ACTRESS' HAT BILL DIVORCED WIFE'S LIABILITY. Sir James W. Ritchie, of Dorset Square, London, and his divorced wife, Mrs. Ritchie, of Baker street, known on the stage as Mary Grey, were sued in the City of London Court last month by Louise and Co., milliners, for £4B 16s, for hats supplied to Mrs. Ritchie. It was stated for the plaintiffs that Sir James Ritchie divorced his wife before he came into the baronetcy. "The only question was whether the husband or his wife was liable to pay for the hate. Mrs. Ritchie in evidence said the hats were supplied when she was living with her husband. At the time he made her no fixed allowance for dress. When she wanted money from him she asked him for it. Sometimes he gave it to her, and now and then he asked for any bills she had. In cross-examination she said her husband always said she was to keep her earnings for herself. He never forbade her to pledge his credit.

Sir James Ritchie said that several times he told his wife distinctly not to pledge his credit, and she promised she would not. He offered her an allowance for dress, and she would not have it, preferring to have money at any time. Numerous other big bills had come in. He would have paid her bills if they had been reasonable. She made about £SOO a year on the stage. , , Judge Rentoul, wjjio remarked that a wife was certainly likely to get more if she had no allowance, held that Mrs. Ritchie was amply supplied with funds necessary to her station in life, as he thought Sir James had behaved generously in the matter. Judgment must be for plaintiffs against Mrs. Ritchie only, with costs. Sir James would get his costs from the plaintiffs, who would get an order for them against Mrs. Ritchie.

A SUFFRAGETTE LEADER Describing Miss Christabel Pankhurst, a writer in an exchange says:—A slim, rather tall, pleasant-looking girl, in a becoming frock of mole charmeuse and a beplumed hat to match. Standing under a shaded electric light (it is late afternoon) she looks : so young—one would hardly guess her twenty-six years. We had expected to see marks of worry and strain on her face, lines and hollows, perhaps a drawn, or at least a stern, expression, for all her youth. But we see a girl with round, smooth cheeks, deep blue eyes, a short nose, a soft mouth, a good complexion, witli bright brown hair, crowning prettily this attractive' face under the becoming hat. Only the slim, nervous body betrays the ht which this- girl's- life must be lived—tne thin body, the qlticE neryous.. gestures of hands and shoulders, as she speaks. ! '.. . .. ;>■••'• ■«■ Miss fankhurst has the orator's gift of hojding her audience with increasing interest and working up to a climax, carrying her hearers with her. The defence of'militant methPds was naturally the crucial part of the speech!" ; ' : We had, freshly heard of the burning 'of the pretty tea pavilion in Kew Gardens, following liard on the bomb' thrqwn'in Mr. M Lloyd Geor'ge's House. The suffragist ■ leader has no qualms about these'thingt —necessary Steps 'only in a progressive campaign. For fifty years had not women vaihly essayed peaceful methods? English men (or" English'legislator's) refused to! attend seriously. These men must pe|fofde be.'touched through. .insii'' most, sacred idol, property. . "We are a nation of shopkeepers! Well, let us attack'the shops. But tlie are not so. numerous-, or soinfluential aft[er" all, .Then, wq.'burnt.a few letters. 'Lately a bomb.,jn George's I house. 1 V Pfropje'., said, we, )iad because no ( pje it % As if ; yq n,aa"no^'pJanned l soJ'..f.Tsere" was. no, pne in it,'because we put it there, when there f \yas no one—jmxlsurajiy,.. A .tea-house in Kew Gardens has been burned down.,.. that was, really clever. However those, w'oineri managed so well Ido not .know. A cordon of police- wajs afaunß'the G.ardens, .ajpd./et they got\ oyer that high wall, and $$ fireto-.that r/ayiljpri'-Jjeforjj anyone anything ,abput[i'i '^Jie's'pe'aker's'yoice, risesrtp.aj xifa'ty gleeful 'triumph, is not imjpairfld.as she adds tus. .tiiese, two, women, tyre now awaiting| x t,l)qir,,|;najj. The gist of all-tliijs is that have found,,-the,,,only effective weapon, viz., to make.it.,nnui)..more, uuflomjfoi'tabhj ;f#r. |he, of to give the vote th,an ,to-give it. ...-.>•, .

!BORED HUSBANDS ,/j

" INFERIOR';'' WIFE'.

! . Ke\y'. Yorjc,, Februar,y 22. The Supreme Court of.X'eV York'-grant-eil a divorce to.Mrs. Milp 1-L Hastings, wlio based her suit,'on a remarkable. le„t,n ter iii which hit husband, an agricultural expert, begged her Tiof'to'confer on him "the mantle of freedom."

Aft&t 'aiialyling/thc points he liked and' the point 3 he disliked in hia wife, Mr. Hastings proceeded "This is not a tearstained'latter;, hut the woman in this case, is hopelessly my mental inferior. - She is'th'ree-fourths. physical, and the other..mental and,spiritual matters she lias"utteriy.nil, and knowing'-as you .do my ignorance of music you can see there is a text tfor T)ored6m'p'ersoiiified!''" " "' 'The fabt'is, shc:bg.rqs me... She bored" Uie from the start, hut I was so lonesomp and love-dick'that even to be bored by.'awoman who made aluss over me was'.a< relief.to whielLiny..worn-out nerves-fell an easy pre);; ~-,1 have .not the,courage; to drive "from me the devoted woman whom I ohce •allowed-to approach me'«o, closely. ' I am, trying now to do my duty and 1 to bring -her to-realise that she must give me up to get her music,' rather,.than allow her to feel that it js I who muit'give her up to get my mind." The. letter ended witli an appeal to his wife: "If you are seeking a divorce to please'me,■ sa.Ve your money anil buy something you can'wear." " LONELY FRENCH WOMEN' DRAMATIST'S WAKNIXfi. Nearly 2,000.i)()6' lonely women are'living in France to-day, declares M. Brieux, the dramatist,, in an article in the Matin, on what lie calls the woman victims of men's tyranny. M. Brieux is the author of "La Femm« : . Seule." now being played, in Paris, and lie says that lie wrote it to excite discussion cm an important question. ''Modern education for a young girl resolves itself (he says) into this formula, that she need only learn how to please men. She learns nothing beyond a few accomplishments and the capacity of writing and talking so as to prevent her ignorance annoying others; in other words, she is litted for the drawingroom. '"This is admirable for those whom it leads to marriage, but what of the others? There are coquettes who never marry,' the plain, the intellectual to whose taste the modern young man does not appear; those who expect to marry and those who expect no more, together with the widows, the divorced, and the abandoned wives. ''The attitude of men to these lonely women is Imd. Men cannot admit (lint women are. if not their equal, at least their equivalent. More cruel than the

ancient law, the new one reads: 'Give thyself, or thou-shalt not eat.' "A social revolution is being prepared, and it will be provoked by the arrival on the market of the female artisan, provoked in its turn by the timidity of young men afraid to marry without money, and rendered possible by the progress of mechanical invention."