GENEROUS WOMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 10

GENEROUS WOMAN.

"FRITHY'S" DIVORCED WIFE.

VOLUNTARY REDUCTION OF ALIMONY.

REGISTRAR SURPRISED,

(Prom Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, October 28,

Last week Lucy Ellen Frith approached the Registrar in • IXivorce here with. a proposed agreement. which that experienced official received with unconcealed surprise. "This is a new one on me!" he eaid. . And he well might "be amazed, for it contained a spontaneous offer from a divorced wife for the reduction of the alimony dm» her from her ex-husband. The story behind this little episode is quite tragic, and it should interest many people in New Zealand—all the thousands who have laughed themselves speechless in the good old days of musical comedy, while Alfred Frith held the stage. For the husband of Lucy Frith is, or was, "Frithy," the comedian who 'by his quaint gestures and glimaces and his own strong sense of humour made himself one of the most successful and incidentally one of the best paid theatrical celebrities of his day. In those good- times Williamsons paid him anything from £20 to £50 a week, even so lately as 1931 he received £20 a week on a New Zealand tour. Married in India. He and his wife met in Calcutta, when .they were both starring. There they were married, and came to Australia soon after. This was in 1913, and for the next decade or more all went well with Frithy. Then—not very long ago —he suddenly disappeared—left the firm that he had served so long, without warning, and started a "show" of his own, "Money to Burn," he called it— with a 'beautiful leading lady. By 1930, liis home was broken up, and Mrs. Frith asked the Court to order him to return to her. He refused, and in May r 1931,

Mrs.' Frith was granted a decree nisi— since made absolute—on the ground, of desertion.. ■ ' Naturally the wife was to receive alimony, and that was calculated on the basis of "Frithy's" past earning power. But Mrs. Frith understands what hard times mean to the theatrical profession; she knows, as she has stated in her appeal to the Registrar, that "during two months of this year he has earned only £21 from eight 'broadcasting sessions"; and she does not wish to impose upon him any intolerable burden. She : has, therefore, made this offer—-that her ex-husband "is to pay her up. to onethird of his current income, not less than fl and no more than £15 a week. But when'he is-unemployed, the order is to be suspended." This strikes me' as one of the most pathetic "human documents" that I have come across for a long time. Out m Long Bay gaol there are men shut up for no deliberate breach of the law, but simply because, through failure of their ordinary means of employment, they have been unable to keep up prescribed payments for maintenance and alimony"Frithy" is at least to be spared this fate; and whatever his faults or failing may have been, those who have laughed so often at and with him . in' happier years, will be glad to know it. But this appeal. to the Court on behalf 'of ® divorced husband is a striking proof oj magnanimity and generosity on the part of the woman, who cannot forget, tha' she bore this man's name, and can still feel sympathy for,him, now that he h aS fallen' on evil days.