WIFE AND HUSBAND

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 145, 15 March 1932, Page 2

WIFE AND HUSBAND

Bachelor Judge’s Declarations BLUNT SPEAKING An action in which a grocer’s assistant, Mr. John Dover Place, of 6am. bridge, England, sued Dr. Charles Frederick Searle, also of Cambridge, for damages, alleging that the doctor had enticed away Mrs. Place, ended recently at the Cambridge Assizes in the disagreement of the jury and their discharge, after a hearing which hqd. aroused intense local and general interest, and which had lasted two days. Mr. Justice McCardie—whose summing up was a brilliant and outspoken exposition of the law on. the status of . married women that he would hear arguments in London -on the point whether there was evidence for the jury to consider. “One of the few remaining degradations that rest upon a wife in England,”. the judge began, “is that she is put on just the same footing, whatever her position in life, as is the boot-boy or the kitchenmaid. The law, with striking impartiality, has put them all on the same footing.” “I Believe in Bluntness.” The judge then turned to the wider question of the position and rights of women to-day. “As this case is one of wide'interest,” he said, “I would like to point out to you that it is not enough -to establish in a cause of action such as this that the wife should leave of her .own accord. ’ “By English law the wife is permitted to leave her husband if she so desires. lam not concerned with any question of moral duty or of the duty that may be laid down by the priesthood or the churches. •

“Those matters stand outside ' this court of law. lam only concerned to deal with legal rights. “For the last 50 years the position of married women in this, country has changed in an extraordinary . manner both by statute and; by decision. “I may put the matter bluntly because I believe in bluntness in these things. The world, is led astray too often by phrases. “I must tell you that a woman’s body does not belong to the husband. -It is her own property; it is not his.

“A woman can leave her husband by her own will. She may choose her own occupation. She may take her own political party. She may profess her own separate religious creed. She may decide whether she will bear children or not and she may' decide when each child shall be born. “To sum up the position now,' in words which I hope will make it plain—it is enough to say that no man today can make himself the owner of a woman under the guise of a marriage service. No Longer, a Serf. The married woman in this country, he continued, had gained her freedom. She was a citizen and not a serf. She could exercise her own judgment. She could choose her own part. She could decide her own future., “The happiness of married life in this country does not depend upon the law; it depends on other things,’! said tlie judge as he led up to tlie whole subject of marriage. “Happy marriage.” he said, “depends upon mutual kindness, mutual courtesy, mutual forgiveness, and mutual renunciation; above all, on mutual regard of the moral obligation that marriage imposes upoii both husband and wife.

“I have spent many years iu observing the unhappy type of marriage.” bo continued, and proceeded to indicate what, in his view, "'ere the causes of such failures and the order jn which they operate. “If one looks upon the causes of unhappy marriages, I should say that they arise first of all because of tbe lack of things I have just mentioned; secondly, because of the lack of temperament; thirdly, because of th& faults of temper; fourthly, because o£ unhappy sexual maladjustments.”