WEEK-ENDING WIVES.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10827, 26 March 1932, Page 3

WEEK-ENDING WIVES.

JUDGE SEES ISO HARM. London, March 12. Once again Mr Justice McCardie, Britain’s bachelor judge, has championed women’s liberties. He says wives would be condemned to permanent slavery if it were established that men could not take them out without their husbands’ consent. I Furthermore, he declared, a wife could eject not only a stranger, but her husband, if it was her own house. Thus has he shattered ihe age-old theory of man being lord and master over every phase of his wife’s life. This latest discussion of wives’ freedom occurred during the resumed hearing of the case in which John Place, a Cambridge grocer’s assistant, is claiming damages from Dr Charles Searle, who, he alleges, enticed away Mrs Place, dubbed by the newspapers as “Cambridge’s Helen of Troy.” “Sex does not matter in friendship,” said the judge in reserving judgment. Wife Not a Slave. "The basis or companionship between men and women, whether married or single, will be much enlarged in the future," he predicted. “A wife is not a, slave. Every good woman wishes to stand, by her husband, but. the law suggests that she can leave him.

“What rights has a wife if she cannot go away for a, week-end when she needs a change?” he asked. He also held that it was impossible to allow religious considerations to enter common law.

In Dressing Gown,

Mr Justice McCardie cited the allegation that the doctor took the wife back to the husband, but 20 minutes afterwards remarked merely “Come along, GwCn; we will go.” He enticed her away in a dressinggown and mackintosh taking no other garment. The. husband was wildly excited. He had a hunting knife, revolver, and ammunition, which was good reason why she should not remain at home. She went to a friend’s house and twice tried to visit her husband later in the week, but he refused to see her. Dr Searle had previously taken her for rides and to dinners without her husband’s knowledge. She denied enticement and said that she wanted a deed of separation, and would have left her husband in any case. Can’t Own Women. In the earlier proceedings Mr justice McCardie said that no man could make himself the owner of a woman under the guise of the marriage service. Woman eould decide whether or not she should have children and when each child should be born. “She is a citizen, not a serf,” he declared.