THE SEAMY SIDE.

Waikato Times, Volume 99, Issue 16651, 17 November 1925, Page 8

THE SEAMY SIDE.

TALES TOLD TO MAGISTRATE,

RIGHTS A DUTIES OF COMEDIANS. (By R. E. Corder in London Daily Mail.) Marriage was given anything but a good advertisement at West London Police Court on Saturday. One after another, in a dispirited and dispiriting procession, deserted wives and despairing husbands filed to the witness box and bemoaned the death of romance.

Mr .1. Ratcliffe Cousins, the magistrate, scanned the long line of applicants. "it seems that half of the women in Hammersmith want separations,” lie said.

There was one woman who told him that her husband had "been away” for eight years.

“Eight years!” Mr Cousins exclaimed. "Why, you’ve almost forgotten him by now!” The woman shook her head. “No, air— n ot, forgotten,” she assured him, adding pointedly, "He used to send me money from time to time, but I haven’t hoard from him since a year ago last March.” She wanted a maintenance order, but the magistrate, suggested lhat if she had not heard from her husband for a year and more lie might not bo alive. , “Alive?" Oh, lie’s alive all right! declared the applicant. '“You see, m.v daughter has ferreted him out!”

A young woman who recently was granted a separation order complained, in the manner of a landlady seeking the ejection of an undesirable lodger, that her husband insisted on living at her address. “Does he still share a room with you?” Mr Cousins asked. “Oh, no, sir; he occupies another room, and I don’t want him there at all." “Does he annoy you in any way. the magistrate inquired. "Ho molested me in the street last night,” she replied with a sudden rise of indignation. “And why did he do that?” Mr Cousins asked. “Well, sir," she explained, I asked him for some money, and then he abused me and said insulting things to me.” . . . “Money?” queried the magistrate. “But under the order that was made to-day was the day for the first payment." ~ . , „ . , ’ “Yes —money to be paid into Court, confirmed the usher. The young woman nodded quickly. “Yes, I know.” she said; “’but I wanted last week’s money that I didn’t get before the order was made.” v She was advised to wait for the payments under the order. "And,” said Mr Cousins, "you can tell your husband that if he doesn’t clear out of your rooms I shall treat him as a trespasser.” ' „ “Oh, thank you very much, sir, she exclaimed delightedly, and gaily vacated the witness box for a much older woman, who asked dismally for o separation order. He husband, she said went away on July i and had not returned. “That’s not a long lime," Mr Cousins observed. “He might have gone for a holiday.” The woman obtained her summons.

Carefully balancing her spectacles on the end of her nose, a grey-haired Jitile woman observed very casually to the magistrate: “When I told him ‘This is a fine time at night to bring the children home’ he became saucy. And then last night he came home drunk and rolled downstairs. Now, sir, what arc you to do with a man like that?” And she tilted her head and peered with mild inquiry through her spectacles, which now began to wobble perilously on the very tip of her nose. But before Mr Cousins could ask her who came home drunk the little woman ran on musingly: “It is unfortunate, of course, that we happen to live near three public-houses — like this: here, there, and there” — and she tapped the witness box shelf in three places. "But I’m sure 1 don’t know whether comedians are entitled io the dole—do you, sir?” Mr Cousins elicited the fact that she was referring to her lodger and that she ardently preferred his room to his company. “And. such company!” she commented in parentheses. They’re always corning round and getting drunk. “Many people spend the dole on drink,” Mr Cousins told her. “That is why so many other people have to pay taxes to keep them.” “Ah, me!”’ she sighed hopelessly. “As to your point about comedians," Mr Cousins added, “I suppose comedians arc allowed to live just as other people arc—that is, if they live, respectably. They arc also entitled to live in lodgings like other people—but they mustn’t make a noise. If your comedian is a nuisance give him notice.”

“Notice? lie takes no notice of a notice, sir!” was the reply. “Well, the court will make him lake notice,” the magistrate promised her, and she left with a cheery “Good-day, sir!”

Tragedy sat heavily on the brow of a young husband who told the magistrate that his wife —whom, he said, he had taken from the streets to many—had forsaken him and their home and had gone back to her old mode of living.

“The worst of it is, sir," he pointed out, “that she’s left on my hands her two children which she had before she knew me.’

“I’m sorry,” the magistrate said, “but I cannot help you. I’m afraid that if you took her off the streets you have only yourself io blame.”

“But I gave her a chance, sir—and now she’s torn up her marriage lines,” the young man broke in. “Ah, women of that type are very difficult to reform—it is practically impossible to reform them,” commented Die magistrate, and advised the young man to seek a "Poor Persons” divorce.

A silver-haired woman, who sported all the colours of the rainbow in her dress and wore a bright blue veil, hobbled in sprightly fashion into the dock. She admitted being drunk. “My heart’s very bad, sir," she said, “and 1 took a little drop of brandy for it.” “That would probably make your heart worse,’ the magistrate told her. A police officer mentioned that she was incapably drunk. “Oh, you might have thought so,” she observed, "but I'm lame.” “Well, then,” said Mr Cousins, “if you have a bad leg brandy is very bad for you—you don’t want want to make the other leg bad, do you?” “No, sir,” she said contritely, and hobbled away with astonishing rapidity to pay a fine of 10s.