'ONLY FIT FOR GAOL'

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 13

'ONLY FIT FOR GAOL'

CALLOUS HUSBAND.

SUGGESTED WIFE'S SUICIDE.

"CADDISH AND DISGRACEFUL."

Twenty-seven-year-old Elizabeth Barton, in Liverpool Hospital after an alleged attempt at suicide, told a detective that her husband had said to her: "Why don't you gas yourself and get yourself out of my roadt"

She alleged that he once asked for money saying that he "wanted to take his girl out." She also found a letter to him in which a girl had written:—

"Why don't you tell your wife about us? ... I could make a sweeter wife than she, have children as well. . . ."

Mrs. Barton, appearing before Liverpool magistrates, said that she became distraught, thought she would frighten her husband, and sat in a chair with a gas tube in her mouth. Then, realising what she was doing, she rushed, to a neighbour's house.

"Is there no crime that can be fastened on the husband for suggesting suicide to his wife?" asked the chairman of the Bench (Colonel Hemelryk). "No," replied Mr. W. Culshaw, who was prosecuting.

The chairman dismissed the charge of attempted suicide under the Probation of Offenders' Act, and said to the husband : —

"Your conduct is beneath contempt. You have behaved in a shocking, caddish and disgraceful way. You ought to be in gaol. That is the only fit place for you." The Bench granted Mrs. Barton a free summons against her husband for alleged persistent cruelty.