AWARDS TO WIDOWS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIX, Issue 59, 26 July 1938, Page 5

AWARDS TO WIDOWS

COMPENSATION FOR LOSS OF

HUSBANDS

LOSS OF JOY OF LIVING

(From The Guardian's Special, Cor res-

pondent—By Air Mail)

LONDON, June 25,

What is the value of a husband? Should death increase it? These question were raised by Mr Justice JLangton in the Admiralty Court, London, this week when appeals were heard against an award to 22 relatives of nine men drowned in a North Sea collision between a French and a Spanish steamer. The widow of a cook had been given £1000 and the widow of a second engineer £4000, with allowances of several hundreds to her children. The one had become the richest widow of a French cook in all France, and the other, at the age of 28, was a more affluent woman than her sister next door who has not lost her husband. "Are we to make it more valuable to lose a husband than to retain him ?" asked the judge. Mr Willmer, for the Frenchmen, said the registrar added awards for loss of expectation of life and for pain and .suffering. It amounted to compensation for deprivation of the joy of living. Mr Justice Langton said: "Unfortunately we have no thermometer of happiness and the judges are giving such a variety of leading in their assesment of the joy of living that the puzzle increases every day. Enjoyment of life," he went on, "is a pure question of temperament. Some men enjoy life most when they are most miserable. I do not think a man enjoys life more at 23 than 44." Here is what Gracie Melds had to say on the subject of happiness: "Some people think when they have terrific fortunes they have achieved complete happiness. I know that that is a lie. Money never brings anyone any happiness. And as for a thermometer," Gracie laughed. "In some cases a thermometer wouldn't work. In other cases it would burst."