The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1860-02-28 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 22.
(Befure Ser C Carsewcu..)
MARTIN r. MARTIN. JUDGIIIST.

This was a petition by a wife for a judicial separation
on the ground of cruelty. The respondent denied the
charge, and the Call,* was heard before his Lordship on
the 14th and 15th instant. Dr. Twiss, Q.C., and hr.
Spinks appeared for the petitioner ; Dr. Phillimore,
and Mr. Coleridge for the respondent.
His Lordship now gave judgment. The respondent, he
said, had undoubtedly been guilty of acts which ulna
within the definition of arrilia, but the question was,
whether they were committed under such circumstances
that they entitled the petitioner to relief. The parties
were married in September, 18.55, and kept a shop at
Guildford. Early in their married life, according to the
petitioner's statement, her husband began treating her
with violence, and when he was remonstrated with by
the medical flan he vindicated himself by saying he had
been provoked. He was, no doubt, a man of very un-
governable temper, and suliject to fits of great excite-
ment, arising to a considerable degree from anxiety
about his business, and no acts of violence were alleged
during the periods when he was not engaged in busi-
ness. The first material acts of violence were in 1858,
when she cliargiel him with wilfully treading on her toes
and putting tier to great pain. The husband admitted
that he had, when excited by her want of activity in the
business, jumped quickly round the counter, and said
lie might then have trodden on her toes, and that be
wore large hobnailed shoes. This showed, at least, a
great deal of reCILICSSIIeSS as to tie injury he might do to
, his wife's person. lit January, 189, they hail a quarrel
about an account which she bad added up, and he took
up a poker and threatened to knock her brain. out. On
another occasion he struck her on the band with an iron
weight, and be admitted that he did rap her over the
knuckles with it. In April, 1859, he locked himself into
his noun, end she, bees, g apprehensive for him rather
than for herself, tried to get into it. She could not get
in and e..ict oe liar friends, and he was at lest persuaded
U. come out. He then said that he bad been standing at
the door with a life preserver in his hand, and it
was very well she did not sueced in opening the door, or
he should have knocked her on the head. In his exami-
nation he was unable to say whether or not he had stood
at the door with that intention with • life preserver.
could there be anything more hazardous to a woman
than cohabitation with • man who had dune such •
thing My the advice of Dr. Walters be then went for
a short time to his family, but returned to his wife on
the :kith of April. After his return there occurred the
last act of violence. He shook his fist at her through
the window when she was in the garden, rapped at the
window so violently that he broke it, and when she
went upstairs with him, forced her with great violence
into a chair, and held her there until she made her
escape, lie then went to his father's at Guildford, and
when he was about to return she became so much
alarmed that on the 14th of June she went back to her
own family. Many of tier statements were corroborated
by other witnesses. Dr. Walters said that on the last
occasion the respondent was labouring under great
' mental excitement, and Ilia passion seemed chitty
directed against his wife. It had been suggested that lie
was out of Ma mind, and that his acts while he was an
irresponaible agent could not be treated as ground for a
judicial separation. The Court could not take on itself
Ito decide the question of insanity or no insanity, but it
apneared that his usual medical attendant, Mr. Sells,
! did elm treat him an insane, because when he was asked
about giving a certificate, in order that he might be
I confined in an asylum, Mr. Sells refused to give one on
the ground that if lie were treated as • lunatic lie would
no dould become one. The main cause of his excite-
' nicht WAS his anxiety about his business, and Mr. Sells
%/Oil that if his wife were to return to cohabitation the
probability was that lie world lie liable to a recurrence
of the same fits, by which she would be expo ed to per-
,.o,, danger. Actin: neon the principles laid down in
"Dystart r. I /dart' (R.diert.iin, 11.5), and in "Holden
r. Ho den" ii l'onantury It., 453, with regard to cruelty,
and believing that the passions of the husband were so
little under his control that the person of the wife would
not be age if she returned to cohabitation, be should
decree • judicial acparation.