ENGLISH DIVORCE LAWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 88

ENGLISH DIVORCE LAWS.

EVIDENCE OF JUDGES. (Far& iroß Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 4. The Royal Commi-.sion on Divorce Law began its sittings last weak, and some interesting evidence is being given. M-v Justice Bigham, President of the Admiralty, Diver oe, and Probate Division, pointed out that absolute equality was quite impossible. The , rich were enabled bo get rho best of counsel and evidence, and uniess the poor could do likewise equality was im.poosibie. Attempts should be made in the direction ct securino- equality, by local courts being used where a poor person was unable to bring his case in the High Court cf London. Evidence might be taken by County Court Judges, but the High Court was toe right court for the termination o: all suits or divorce. MISCONDUCT OF PARTIES. A little later Sir John said he vyotud express a strong view which would no doubt shock a great many people. Misconduct, 1m said, except in very serious cases, scould not deolive either a husband or a wife trom getting relief. He had recently had a case before him in which he was satisfied that a petitioning wife had been driven to misbehaviour by the cruelty of her husband who was misconducting himself day by day with a servant in the house. He would have given that woman relief, but could not do so. The misconduct, he further explained, must be of an excusable or slight character. He would not give relief to a man who offended openly. From the man’s point of view, if in 20 years he had once made a slip, he (Sir John) did not think that ought to take away from him the right to separate himself from a dissolute or abandoned woman. USES OF PUBLICITY. Dealing with the question, of publication of divorce proceedings, Sir John said he only got respectable papers, but he believed that certain papers, especially certain Sunday papers, published reports which ought not to be allowed. The proprietors of one of these Sunday papers had told him that if what were called “ spicy details ” were omitted he had complaints from his agents all over the country that the rival paper had “ got it all in;” and consequently his papers would not sell. *‘l have no doubt at all,” he added, “ that these indecent and improper details are inserted in order to sell the papers, and not because it is necessary in the report. I have a very strong feeling that it would be undesirable to suppress reports altogether. I know from the anxiety of the parties that cases should be kept out of the papers that publicity helps to keep people straight, and I would not take any steps that would prevent that publicity.” SEX EQUALITY. Dealing with the subject of sex equality, Sir John said bo did not think the act of misconduct on the part of a man had anything like the same significance as such an act on the part of a woman. Most men —he thought all men —knew perfectly well that misconduct on the part of a man might be more or less accidental. It was not inconsistent with his continued esteem and love of his wife (some people, of course,/would think differently), whereas an act of misconduct on the part of a woman, in his opinion, was quite inconsistent with the continued love and esteem of a husband. Sir John also said: “If you get rid of drink the doors of the Divorce Court would be almost closed.” He did not believe in a man or woman being bound for life to a lunatic, and he regarded habitual or hopeless drunkenness as a form of insanity. DIVORCE FOR THE POOR. Mr Justice Bargrave Deane, also a judge in the Divorce, Admiralty, and ProbateDivision, said he thought the divorce law should be for the poor as much as for the rsah, because they required it as much as the rich did. At present poor people were absolutely barred from the courts unless they lived in London. People sometimes saved up for years in order to get the money to bring a suit for divorce, and in that period they were in the position of being neither married nor unmarried. Tho question of divorce for the poor must mean local courts. They could not bring them to London. With regard to expense, there might very easily be economy in court fees. Ho opposed separation orders altogether, believing that they led to immorality. If separation was to be granted at all it should be temporary, to see if time and other circumstances might bring them together again. He thought that three months at the outside should be the limit allowed for a separation, after which a further application should be necessary. With regard to the relative positions of the sexes under the divorce laws, the witness thought that they should be the same. He did not see how misconduct was more unmoral on one side than on the other. He would make desertion for four years an absolute ground for divorce. He was very averse to separating people without giving them the right to marry again, and he thought there should be a right to divorce in a case where a man or woman who committed a crime was sentenced to penal servitude for five years or upwards. As to drunkenness, he did not believe there was such a thing as hopeless habitual drunkenness. He would treat drunkenness as a crime, and the punishment should be that people must give it up. He would not have such a thing as separation. “Separation is a living .death —it is wrong altogether.” IMPRISONMENT ADVOCATED. Sir George Lewis also gave evidence. Speaking from a 54 years’ experience of afi. branches of the law, he said that for the last 30 years he had advocated in the press a number of amendments of the law of divorce in the direction of securing sex equality, and making relief possible to the poor. He would make the grounds of divorce the same for man as. for woman — namely, adultery, cruelty, desertion, lunacy, and imprisonment for five years. If the adultery of his wife entitled a man to divorce, the adultery of her husband should entitle a woman to divorce. Sir George emphasised the further disabilities fo which a wife was subjected, and said he knew of many oases (ho had dealt with thousands of divorce cases in his time) in which ladies suffered “absolute torture”

and lived a life of "perfect misery" on account of the known conduct of husbands. Nothing couid be more brutal- than the conduct related to him by some of the&e injured wives. His clients belonged for the most pari to trie wealthy classes. With regard to the poor, theirs was a shocking position. " There is no divorce for the poor,'' he said. "They not the means to esme to the only court (in London) in w.hich they ca.n g*t relief. Lord Corel!: Have you any alternative suggestion'— Certiur.ly—the County Court. J tfiink it is an insult to the County Court judges to say that they are not competent to try a question of facts—whether there hue been desertion or adultery. On the question of the publication of reports of divorce proceedings by newspapers, "sir George said he did not see how a picture of a trial couid be given without indecent details being gone mto, and he thousrht divorce should not. be reports d. Lord Corell • I"o you think publication has any deterrent effect upon the comvinsion of the original offence? —No, I do not. I have not seen any decrease in the, number cf such cases since their publication became general.

REMARKABLE BLACKMAIL EVIDENCE.

LEADING K.C.'S OPINION

LONDON, March 11. The Royal Commission on Divorce continued its sittings this week, and- some interesting evidence has been taken. Mr G. Heron Allen, senior partner of a Soho square firm of' solicitors, with a large family connection, strongly opposed publication, and said that publication was part of the most elaborate blackmailing machinery. A man, making the acquaintance of a woman, and relations being established between them, received a visit from a man alleged to be the husband of the woman, who, threatening divorce proceedings, with its attendant newspaper publicity, demanded payment of a sum of monev. This was almost invariably paid. In the higher class of cases the husband or alleged husband of the woman demanded, on the threat of divorce proceedings, that a man should pay her bills. Questioned by Mr J. A. Spender, the witness said his reference to blackmail resulting from threatened publicity applied only to a wrong-doing husband, who was prepared to face a domestic exposure, but who would not face a public exposure. He would make it contempt of court for a newspaper to refer even to an indisputable fact that a man had been a co-respon-dent. Mr Spender: Even if that man were a candidate for a public office? —I would make the paper liable under the ordinarylaw of libel. If fear of publicity is no deterrent, how does the blackmailer succeed? —When the man of whom I am speaking commits the act he has not the slightest fear of the fact coming to light. It is only when he is threatened that he fears exposure. Mr Rufus Isaacs, K.C. : Are those oases of blackmail common? —Painfully common. His firm had dealt with two during the last six months, and they had dealt with half a dozen within the last two years. It was his experience that the innocent man so blackmailed paid rather than allow the divorce case to proceed. Answering Sir George White, Mr Allen said the blackmailer engaged a not too scrupulous solicitor to negotiate for him for a lump sum of money in settlement. Are there many such solicitors in the profession?—Not a great many. OPPOSITION TO COUNTY COURTS. Mr Barnard - , K.C, said he thought it would be injurious to the public that any judge except a judge of the HighCourt should dissolve marriage. It was for the benefit of the public that there should be only a few judges who could dissolve mairriagas; then people knew perfectly the lines the judges went upon. If divorce cases were tried is the county courts, where there were fifty judges, the people would begin actions without any certainty of getting a divorce; in some county courts people would get a divorce for almost anything, in others the judges would be perhaps stricter than the judges now presiding in the Divorce Court; also the amount of collusion would Le increased! tremendously. The local jurors, many of them, would make up their minds before they went into court as to what should be done with the case. " Of course," Mr Barnard said, " if you desire to make divorce easy, so that almost anyone can get a divorce, and if it does not matter whether there is collusion or not, and if divorce is to be granted on grounds not now recognised by law, there can be no objection to transferring it to any court. In fact, I don't know that it would be necessary to have a court at all. There might be a registrar of divorce, and you might let people have a divorce if they want it." Lord Gorell: What do you say as to the equality of the sexes?—l am against allowing a wife to obtain a divorce on the ground of the husband's misconduct only. NO SANCTITY TO THE MARRIAGE TIE. Mr Robert E. Moore, barrister, said that for seven years past he had been associated with the Poor Man's Lawyer Department at the Cambridge University Settlement in the Camberwell road. Among the poorer classes in London, in his opinion, no sanctityjjhatever attached to the marriage tie. jflßie low esteem in which marriage was neld by the very poor was due, he believed, to the difficulty of dissolving it. If there wcto greater facilities for obtaining divorce, where good grounds existed, there would not be the same reluctance to contract a legal marriage. In the main the difficulty was one of expense. In fact, the existing system amounted practically to a denial of the benefit of the Divorce Law to the poorer classes. It was not at all easy to suggest any adequate remedy. The very poor, for the most part, were incapable of appreciating what evidence

was required, and a solicitor ■VniA therefore necessary. On being asked' for his opinion as to the suggested extension of jurisdiction to the County Courts, witness said that some form of local court was essential. Special district ji-'dges should! be appointed, whose duty it would be to travel periodically round* the country and try divorce cases. County Court judges might be .selected for the purpose. _ One objection with regard to the jurisdiction of county courts in divorce was that divorce cases ought not to be treated in the same way as ordinary county court cases. It would not be seemly to sandwich divorce cases between judgment summonses and running-down cases. With regard to separation orders, they were absolutely essential under the existing law for the protection of wives. Mr W. G. Ramsay-Fairfax, president of the Divorce Law Reform Union, said he thought a woman's right to divorce should be the same as her husband's, and 1 did not think this would cause the Divorce Court to be flooded with wives' petitions. In Scotland, where the sexes were on an equal footing now, only fifty petitions by wives on the ground of the husband's misconduct were presented in 1908. Mr R. 1. Gates, secretary of the Divorce Law Reform Union, said be had made calculations from taxed bills of costs, which showed the average cost of a defended case to be £l2l and of an undefended case £SO.