PETERSEN CUTS LOOSE.

Free Lance, Volume XIV, Issue 720, 18 April 1914, Page 4

PETERSEN CUTS LOOSE.

Getting Rid of a Wife by Pretending to Die. KARL Petersen, of Stockholm, is a shrewd man. He suspected his wife, and he felt that he'd had enough of it; but the lady was apparently as shrewd as he. Then Petersen

thought of a scheme—with the connivance and help of his doctor and his solicitor he pretended to die. He lay in his coffin,' and his will was read showing that' he had left everything to his wife. Immediately the coast was clear, and only the wife and the. "corpse" remained in the apartment, the wife telephoned joyously to her lover: "Splendid news. Monstrous hushand dead." The lover came along, and as he kissed and clipped Mrs. Petersen the monstrous hushand arose from his coffin and put an end to felicity. Mrs. Petersen is divorced now. but without Petersen's possessions she may not find life easy. ~ A clever trick: hut is it fair? There are thousands, tens of thousands, of women in the world who would like their husbands to die. Should they be tricked into premature expression of satisfaction, hooes doomed to die? Mrs. Petersen,- kissing her lover over her husband's corpse, did not act delicately: but she was surely within her; rights. For such behaviour of hers, without proof of antecedent sin. no English court would have granted Petersen a divorce. One way and another, there can be no doubt that Karl Petersen played his wife a very mean trick, and ordinary peonle will be inclined .to excuse the lady for not being much in love with him.