UNFAIR TO HUSBANDS

Evening Star, Issue 21718, 12 May 1934, Page 20

UNFAIR TO HUSBANDS

WIVES' VIEWS SN BRITISH LAW Married women who hod listened to a solicitor’s protests against what he termed “ senseless anachronisms ” in the law as applied to them were invited at a recent Law Society meeting at Oxford to reply. Their male colleagues expected a stormy outburst. To the men’s surprise, the women’s views, as expressed by Mrs Appelbe, who practises at a solicitor as Miss G. Morrison, agreed in every way with those of the solicitor. Mr Isadore Kerman, of London, had demanded that the liability of the husband for the civil wrongs of the wife should be abolished. He had recalled that “ there was a time when a husband was entitled by law to inspire his wife with a taste of tortious indulgences by what 1 might colloquially describe as ‘ knocking her about.’ ” Mr Kerman had asked why a married woman should bo amenable to bankruptcy only when engaged in trade, while a man, a. spinster or a widow could be adjudicated bankrupt irrespective of any connection with trade. He had declared that there was not the slightest reason why a married woman should not be sent to prison on a judgment summons. The same discretion to commit to prison as now rested with a judge in relation to widows and unmarried women could safely be entrusted to them in the case of married women. And the women—there were twenty of them in the hall—replied through Mrs Appelbe, thus:— “ I have great pleasure in supporting all the proposals which Mr Kerman has put forward. To women of independent spirit, the present position of married women in financial matters is appalling in the extreme. It is humiliating. “ No woman wants to take all the advantages and none of the disadvantages, and now that women have so many advantages we want to take the rough with the smooth. We want to bear our own burdens and not thrust them upon any husbands we may happen to have. “ Mr Kerman has not mentioned income tax. It is another scandal. A husband is still liable for his wife’s income tax.”