SEPARATION WANTED

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 11, 13 July 1914, Page 8

SEPARATION WANTED

AN UNHAPPY MARRIAGE. "This is a particularly bad case," said Air. P. W. Jackson to Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., to-day, when' Charles Alexander Daniel Thomas, who had been arrested on warrant, appeared in tho dock. "It is one of the worst cases I have ever been connected with." Kate Harriett Thomas, defendant's wife, made application for a separation order on the grounds of persistent cruelty and failure to provide maintenance. > The parties, said Mr. Jackson, were married in 1911. Defendant was then thirty-three and the complainant only fifteen. The couple lived happily together for a time, and then defendant became cruel. They lived for some time in Wellington, and then went into the King^ Country and various places in the Wellington district. Later they came back to Wellington, where the cruelty wag continued. Finally the man abandoned her altogether, and left her with one child 2£ years old. „ Another child born this year had died. Proceedings were taken by summons when defendant was working at May Mom, but he heard of the proposed ,action, and could not be found. Subsequently he was arrested somewhere up North, going under the name of Edgar. Complainant corroborated these statements, and added that she had once been threatened with a gun. Her husband gambled frequently, and while staying at the People's Palace Hotel insisted on her, going to her bedroom at 9 o'clock each ? evening. He would force her upstairs, and when in the room lock the door, and stay away all night. On one occasion a bucket of water was poured over her. Her husba-nd was always swearing at her and cursing- her. The case had not concluded when The Post went to press.