DIVORCES BY THE HUNDRED.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1676, 22 December 1887, Page 3

DIVORCES BY THE HUNDRED.

: , Chicago, 111., Sept. 24. —This was the red letter day in the history of the divorce courts of More than one hundred default cases alone—■aid to be the largest number on record'for one day—were disposed of. The reputation of Chicago as a divorce headquarters, the material growth of the city’s population, and the fact that the Ridges have refused during their vacations this year to hear any but urgefit' matters, are variously assigned as the causes for the exceptional heaviness of the calendar.

Five i courts,' exclusively occupied with- divorces, were working simultaneously. The two hundred and odd persons whose matrimonial existence it was proposed to judicially murder were lost in the crowds of sympathising friends' and curious spectators who came to witness the execution. Away up in the tall Courthouse, on the floor nearest heaven, were the five divorce mills. Four spacious elevators were constantly kept crowded bringing from the bottom floors jibe fodder for the mills. Coming and going up and down, for hours, the elevators carried their cargoes—people of the most diverse degree and kind, some all tears and sighs, others flippant or grimly content, and still others smiling and happy. Then there were the children, generally brought along to fill some gap in the testimony. While the long procession was passing'and repassing, the hardened official# looked on, grinning at the array of domestic misery spread out before them. Owing to the press of business marriage knots were loosed between ill-matched couples with even more than the usual celerity of Chicago divorce* courts. Before everyone of the all the seats and the aisles between were densely packed with a ihotley crowd, and not a syllable uttered by a shamed, broken-hearted wife escaped them. Men dropped in only to find themselves within arm’s reach of their ex-wives. Sometimes a pair of green eyes would glare at one of these intruders. His inner consciousness would tell him, and he would turn round a scared, white face. -: ■

“Papa! Papa!”,cried a little girl, as a well-dressed gentleman came up to one of the elevators, a little while after the court convened. The child was snatched away by the lady that held her band, and the gentleman turned his head and instead of waiting for the elevator walked down stairs and out into the street. He had just been divorced iron* the lady who had the child. It was well along in the afternoon before the courts were closed.