TWO OF A KIND.

NZ Truth, Issue 66, 22 September 1906, Page 6

TWO OF A KIND.

When both husband and wife drift to the devil it shows that there has been something very radically wrong m the home. A case of this soft came under notice at Christchurch t'other day when a clean-shaved fellow named Charles Wilson was lumbered for being an idle and disorderly person, having no lawful visible means of support. He denied the accusation, and called a witness to show that he had done a whole day and a half's work m three weeks. Appears that Wilson is an engineer, but is a very sick sort of an engineer, as at lunch time on the second day he was told he had better put on his tattered coat and "smoke." It I then transpired that he had been m gaol, and was out three weeks, and once a cove is released from Lyttelton the police keep their peepers on him, and if he doesn't get toil m a minute and a half or thereabouts he is liable to get shot m again. Wilson pleaded hard for release, saying that he had a two months job at Loburn to go to. So he was let go. Next his wife, Ada Wilson, was placed m the dock, and also charged under the vag. Constable Gibson said the woman was always on the streets and when her husband was m gaol she lived with another man. She Was a common prostitute. Prisoner here interjected, "No, not now." The constable said he had seen her with a man m Latimer-square at 4 o'clock m the afternoon, and they were m a very peculiar positioij. Prisoner said 'she had been respectably kept by a | plasterer named Skog, and she wished him subpoenaed. This was done and

next day William Skog, a bald-head-ed bloke, said he had kept the woman for a couple of years. "And haven't you kept me off the town ?" queried prisoner. "Yes." "And ain't I an honest woman ?" The witxi?ss replied m the affirmative, and started to tell the Court how he got hold of her. He found her running amok down town one night, and took her to a chemist's shop and then to his home. She had been m gaol since, but that was through meeting her beloved husband, who plied her with drink. That was why she was m trouble now. Day, S.M., said that the fact that a woman was being "kept" was no defence to a charge of this sort. He sent her up for a quarter. So the husband got out and the wife got m ; and a nice complaisant husband this blackguard must be, fraternising with his wife while she is living with another man. There are a great many of these "kept" ladies about Christchurch, and their husbands don't seem to care a damn. They appear to be only too pleased to get rid of them.