LASHED BY WHIP

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21202, 27 August 1940, Page 7

LASHED BY WHIP

DIVORCE IN LONDON VAUDEVILLE ARTIST’S PETITION HUBAND WEEPS IN COURT (United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. copyrlgrht) LONDON, August 26 Divorce on the ground of cruelty was granted today by the Court of Appeal to Jessie Varenne, a vaudeville artist. When the case came before Mr Justice Bucknill on February 21, the wife’s suit was dismissed on the ground that, although the husband was in a passion and regardless of whether or not he hit his wife, he was not guilty of legal cruelty. The case arose from a vaudeville act, in which the husband, Roger Leon Varenne, used a stockwhip to cut a cigarette held in his wife’s lips. The wife gave evidence that hexhusband, after missing the cigarette at the first try, deliberately lashed the whip four times, and struck her on the head.

During the appeal hearing the husband wept when protesting that he did not deliberately hurt his wife. Lord Justice Mackinnon, in giving judgment, said: “I think that the husband ought not to have got off by the skin of his teeth.”

The ground of appeal was that Mr Justice Bucknill had not applied a correct definition to the term “legal cruelty.”