CURIOUS DIVORCE CASE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 787, 18 August 1916, Page 8

CURIOUS DIVORCE CASE.

BACK TO THE OLD LOVE. "A TEMPORARY ARRANGEMENT." i "A peculiar case from the beginning," commented his Honour Mr Justice Dennislon this morning, in the hearing of an undefended divorce case. The petitioner was Henry Lynnc Hartog, a sharebroker, the respondent was Josephine E. Lynne, and the co-respondent Edward Gatenby Hopkins, who, at the time of the service of the divorce citation, was a farmer at Kekerangu, near Kaikoura. lie is a returned soldier. The story outlined by Mr Hunt and amplified by the evidence of the petitioner, was that in the early part of 1915 the respondent was engaged to the co-respondent. The wedding day was fixed, and the bridegroom (the present co-respondent) was to come from Wellington a day or two before. But he did not arrive, and it seemed that he had gone to Australia to join the forces. On July 12, 1915, the respondent gave birth to a child. In October, 1915, respondent obtained a maintenance order against Hopkins in respect to that child. On December 5 she married the petitioner, who was not aware, . until a few days before the marriage, of the existence of the child. The marriage was not a happy one. Mrs Hartog told her husband, in the early days of her married life, that it was only a temporary arrangement until Hopkins arrived back. Within seven or eight days of the marriage, respondent left the petitioner, and went to slay with her sister at Kaikoura, without Hartog's consent. She remained away until March of this year, when Hartog's business took him to Duncdin. While he was there she wrote asking him to take her back. He agreed to do so provided that she attended to her home duties, and kept within the allowance he made her, and gave up incurring debts. They lived in Duncdin until April 22. Then she asked him if she could go away, for another holiday. He was averse to her doing so, but eventually he permitted her to go for a week's holiday at Sumner. Her sister was with her at Sumner. Mrs Hartog had promised to write to her husband from Sumner, but she failed to do so, and this made him suspicious. So he came to Christchurch, and found that on the previous day she had left to go to her sister at Kaikoura. He instructed Mr Hunt to telegraph to his (petitioner's) brother-in-law at Kaikoura (Mr Kennedy) that she was not staying in Kennedy's home with

petitioner's consent. She returned to him a week later. Petitioner met her at the Christchureh railway station, and made provision for the accommodation of her and the child, taking a room for them :it the Provincial Hotel, where he, too, was staying. She said that she was going to join Hopkins in a day or two. lie tried to persuade her to return to him, hut she refused. On Thursday, May 18, at 12.30 p.m., she left the Provincial Hotel with her child, and Hartog did not see her again until May 20. Then she said that she might as well "make a clean breast of it," and she told him that on the Thursday night she had stayed at the Canterbury Hotel, Lytlelton, with Hopkins. Petitioner suggested that she should write a confession, and she did so, in Mr Hunt's office. This confession was read. In it, besides admitting the Canterbury Hotel incident, Mrs Hartog stated that she intended to go to Hopkins, and was not going back to her husband. Other evidence having been given, his Honour granted a decree nisi, to be made absolute in three months. Mr Hunt did not ask for any costs against the co-respondent.