WIFE'S APPEAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8309, 6 May 1905, Page 4

WIFE'S APPEAL.

'WOULD GO TO PRISON WITH BANKRUPT MUSB-.N1)., "This is always the way in matters of this kind. The wife and children suffer, and not the guilty party." With these words, uttered amid the Bobbing of a grief-stricken woman who had made a long, impassioned but vain appeal on behalf of an erring ( husband, Judge Boyd, in the Dublin Bankruptcy Court, on March 21, ordered the committal of Arthur H. fillis Spong for unsatisfactory answers in connection witH , his affairs. Spong, it was stated, was adjudicated a bankrupt under the name of E. H. E. Selwyn, and had also passed under the name, of Stapleton. He had told his creditors that he' had £600 a year, but that it was vested in a friend in Yorkshire. • He said, further, that ah aunt would leave him money,- and when he was examined in camera later on he spoke of injury that might be caused if tnere was a public examination. He gave an undertaking then fo attend for further questioning, but broke his promise, and was arrested in consequence. On March 20 he admitted that his stories of means were pure fabrications. His real name was Arthur Henry, he said, and he never had any occupation. , Counsel directed attention to a 'report in a Donegal newspaper of a gar-den-party given at Spong's residence at Killybegs, at which lavish hospitality was dispensed, and asked the bankrupt whether he had sent copies' of this paper to persons from whom he wished to get money, to show he was a man of means. Spong said he did not remember anything of the kind. When the Judge had committed Spong, the bankrupt's wife came into the front benches of the court and addressed the Judge. "My lord," she oried. " I appeal to you on behalf of myself and my ohild and for my husband. He is the only one I have to look to in this world. He would work, air, if you gave bim the chance. God will help him. If you commit him, sir, myself and my child will have to go to tha workhouse. I have no home to go to, for I made a runaway match with bim and my people will discard me. I will work, sir. and work -hard, to pay back the creditors.*' Judge Boyd said he could do no more, then in desperation' she cried: "Can 1 go to prison with him?" TJie Judge shook his head, and amid a scene indescribably painful the bankrupt was removed.