DIVORCES BY THE HUNDRED.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 826, 30 December 1887, Page 1

DIVORCES BY THE HUNDRED.

FIVE CHICAGO COURTS SEVER AS MANY SCORE OF MATRIMONIAL BONDS IN A DAY.

Chicago, 111., September 24. This was the red-letter day in the history of the divorce courts of Chicago. More than one hundred default cases alone—said to be the largest number on record for one day—were disposed of. The reputation of Chicago as a divorce head quarters, the material growth of the city’s population, and the fact that theJudges have refused during their vacations this year to hear any but urgent matters, are variously assigned as the causes for the exceptional heaviness of the calendar.

Five courts, exclusively occupied with divorces, were working simultaneously. The two hundred and odd persons whose matrimonial existence it was proposed to judicially murder were lost in the crowds of sympathising friends and curious spectators who came to witness the execution. Away up in the tall courthouse, on the floor nearest heaven, were the five divorce mills. Four spacious elevators were constantly kept crowded bringing from the bottom floors the fodder for the mills. Coming and going, up and down, for hours, the elevators carried their cargoes —people of the most diverse degree and kind, some all tears and sighs, others flippant or grimly content, and still others smiling and happy. Then there were the children, generally brought along to fill some gap in the testimony.. SMILING AT MARITAL MISERY.

While the long procession was passing and repassing the hardened officials looked on, grinning at the array of domestic misery spread out before them. Owing to the press of business marriage knots were loosed between ill-matched couples i with even more than the usual celerity of Chicago Divorce Courts. Before everyone of the five judges all the seats and the aisies between were densely packed with a motley crowd, and not a syllable uttered by a shamed, broken-hearted wife escaped them. Men dropped in only to find themselves standing within arm’s reach of their ex-wives. Sometimes a pair of green eyes would glare at one of those intruders. His inner consciousness would tell him, and he would turn around a scared, white face. j “ Papa ! papa ! ” cried a little girl as a well-dressed gentleman came up to one of the elevators, a little while after the Court convened. The child was snatched away by the lady who held her hand, and the gentleman -turned his head, and instead of waiting for the elevator walked down the stairs and out into the street.

He had just been divorced from the lady who had the child. It was well along in the afternoon before the Courts were closed.