AN M.P.'S DIVORCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17712, 25 August 1919, Page 8

AN M.P.'S DIVORCE

EXTRAORDINARY STATEMENT.

INDICTMENT OP PRESENT LAW.

(Feom Odb Own Coebespondent.) LONDON, July 1. _ The Staffordshira Sentinel, Hanley, publishes iho following letter from Colonel J. C. Wedgwood, MVP. for' Newcastlo-under-Lyme:— ''' When I was divorced, tho rector of Newcastle, with great charity, declined to join in tho clerical outcry against me. I made up my mind then that, in justice to him and to those like him, I must, when the time came, write this letter, liowcvcr ■unpleasant it is to publish my private affairs,; for tho whole of North Staffs. My married life was a very happy one until in 1913 my wife ceased to love me. She is one of those who believe that to live with a man whom you do not love is prostitution, and we separated for many years. I kept hoping, that she would change, for after 20 years the break always seems inconceivable. ,1' offered to start again in a dqw country, where no one would know us. It was all useless, and when I came back from Africa in 1916, and failed again, I at last realised that plans had to be made to .reconstruct iny life and home. I consulted a colleague, a leading K.C. in the House. Ho told me that there wero only two ways for me to get free and re-establish a home. 1 could acquire a Scottish domicile, and then divorce my -wife for desertion, or I could let myself be divorced by her under •English law. It takes, I think, three years to acquire the rights and privileges of a Scotsman, and it would have meant uprooting myself from Staffordshire, so I tinally chose tho second alternative. Tho law which ; the Church will not allow us politicians to change insists that a wife shall only be able to divorce her husband if he has been found guilty of dssertion and adultery. More merciful than tho Church, the law allows desertion to be. assumed if a writ for restitution of conjugal rights be obtained and not complied with, so letters were exchanged, and I was duly found guilty of desertion. All the world read in the papers that I hadMescrted a wife and seven children after 20 years' married life. Such a thing, if true, strikes me as being moro blackguardly than adultery. There was ho protest from Mr Sinker (vicar of St. George's, Newcastle), but I am not likely to forget that day in the House of Commons. I spoke six times that day on tho Education Bill to a perfectly silent House, feeling that every man was saying: 'That is tho man who has deserted his wife and seven children.' ' Tho next stage was to get myself proved guilty of adultery. I chose the simplest way, took a suite of rooms at the Charing Cross Hotel, and took a lady there who was not my -wife. As a matter of fact thero was no adultery there. It is not exactly a festive occasion when you arc carefully providing evidence to end a happy married life. I cannot imagino what sensible people should expect me to bo doing with a sitting room at a London hotel except to sleep in, or why any one who. has a comfortable flat in London should go to the Charing Cross i Hotel at ajl, but people who knew that xny children were at Moddershall with me, and saw that the ' desertion' conviction must bp formal immediately jumped to the conclusion that the member for Newcastle was a thorough bad lot, bat smacked their lips over 'guilty of adultery.' I think Mr Sinker might have been moro reticent in tl» matter, as had I committed this frightful sin it would only have been to satisfy tho insistence of his church. Even this ayenno to freedom i 3 barred to all but therich. . It has cost me several hundred pounds. Our divorce laws constitute the grossest caso of one law for the rich and another for the poor, for which again Mr Sinker and his kind are responsible. "Throughout I have dons what I conceive to bo the most honourable thing in the most hanonrnblo way, and I havo = had good friends to buck mo up, but I ask you to observe what happens to a public man •who tries to act honourably, but of 9CO similar cases Inst year, mine was t.h/? only one reported three times, m.v portrait was jn the picture papers three times. I was deluded jn anonymous aburo three times. An honourable nnmo vns dragged in the mud, and foremost in tho h\int is a minister of the Church of Kndand T th.nik the S&rtinel for taking- another I in", and for trying tofind explanations for what f-emrd inexpressible. ... n Whatever mv associations may bo in the future with those who have honoured me with th"ir confidence for 14 years, I know that at least they regard mo as a. man of-courage. In the oireumfttancrs. they would not hnve expreWl to do otiter than T have don«. and I havo my reward, for before these line are read I shall have exercised mv right of remarriage, and fn that T brieve T shall have the good wishes of all that Is beet'in the county of my birth."