LEGITIMATION BILL

Evening Star, Issue 18690, 19 July 1924, Page 8

LEGITIMATION BILL

HELD UP'IN MEANTIME. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, July 18. (Received July 19, at 1 a.m.) Tho Legitimacy Bill was returned to the House of Lords, owing to the fact that it had not passed all its legislative stages before the end of the session. The House of Lords passed an amendment which the House of Commons rejected.— Reuter. [The House of Lords, by 54 votes to 18, carried the Archbishop of Canterbury s amendment to Lord Buckmaster’s Illegitimacy Bill. Tho amendment provided that legitimation should not apply to a ma.rriecl man’s children by another woman. The Archbishop of Canterbury feared that otherwise pressure might be brought to bear on a wife to obtain a divorce to enable tbo husband to marry the other woman. He declared that there were too many divorces already. Subsequently tho House of Commons, by 117 votes to 13, carried tho third reading of tho Legitimacy Bill. Three women members of the House of Commons—the Duchess of Atholl, Lady Astor, and Mrs Philipson—wanted to exclude children whose parents, or one of them, was married to someone else at the time of birth. Miss Susan Lawrence opposed this proposal, which was rejected by 136 votes to 65.]