Divorce problems of to-day / by E.S.P. Haynes.

  • E. S. P. Haynes
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Divorce problems of to-day / by E.S.P. Haynes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/136 page 1
    THE ANOMALIES OF THE ENGLISH DIVORCE LAW. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, December, 1906. The Statute of 1857, by which divorce was made possible in this country without the expense of obtaining a private Act of Parliament, was largely due to the famous sentence pronounced by Mr. Justice Maule on a poor man for bigamy. Most readers will remember the fine irony with which the judge pointed out to the prisoner how, after being deserted by an unfaithful wife, and having married again chiefly for the sake of his young children, he should have tracked his wife’s seducer, brought an action for damages against a person who was probably a pauper, and finally petitioned the House of Lords for a divorce, which in all would have cost about five or six hundred pounds to a man who was not worth as many pence. Most readers, however, are probably not aware that, in spite of the facilities given for proceedings in forma pauperis, the cost for a poor man (especially if he lives in the country) of obtaining a divorce is almost equally prohibitive in our own day. Mr. Plowden has publicly declared his belief that police 1 B
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