The Sun.
London, England, 1831-04-05 00:00:00

THE LAW OF. HUSBAND AND WIFE,

AS NEWLY REVISED .

Sir. Peter Laurie noticed, with concern, a
,hurt time since, a change which had rec.mtly
been worked by the Judges, in the law of Eng-
land, upon the subject of adultery. The deci-
sion to which he referred was pronounced by
Judge Bayley (with whom sat Justices Little-
dale and James Parke), in the Court of king's
Bench, in the early part of November last ; and,
as it escaped observation at the time, it may he
interesting to give a brief account of it now.
It is no longer true that there is, one law for
the rich and another for the .poor, where an un-
happy husband discovers that his connubial hap-
piness has been destroyed; for, altl.o igh the
poor man may, by reason of his poverty, be in-
capable of raising a suit for ,separation in the
Ecclesiastical Courts, yet,,ir he chooses to se-
parate without obtaining a legal sanction for so
doing, the overseers of the poor can no longer
claim to be indemnified against the expence of
maintaining his wife.
It has been the almost universal practice of
the Magistracy to hold that every man is bound
to support his wife, and that, however licentious
her conduct may be, the obligation to support
her continues until he obtains a formal relief in
the Ecclesiastical Courts. Therefore, if the wife
becomes chargeable to any parish (which she
sometimes elects to do, from spleen rather than
necessity), the Justice will commit the husband
as a rogue and vagabond for neglecting to main-
tain his family, unless he shall agree to make a
sufficient allowance to prevent her from being
burdensome any longer. The Judges, how-
ever, have now de:ermined that such commit-
ments are illegal, the Vagrant Act only empow-
ering the Magistrate to punish every person re-
fusing or neglecting to support any part of his
family " whom he may be legally bound to
maintain," while a husband cannot be said to
be legally bound to maintain an adulteress, who
could not recover a maintenance in an Ecclesia-
stical Court. Henceforward, then, it will be a
valid defence, upon being charged before a Ma-
gistrate with neglecting to maintain a wife, to
call witnesses, and adduce legal proof of her
,nfidelity.

But to the case. Mr. W. H. Flintan, a com-
mercial traveller, married Miss Elizabeth Ste-
vens in 1814, and they lived together till
November, 1826, when she quitted his house in
consequence of a dispute about her having
pawned his plate, and lent his watch to a man
named Bevan ; and three days after this separa-
tion the husband received a citation from the
Consistory Court for cruelty and adultery ; which
citation was dismissed in July, 1828, upon
proof that the wife had herself committed adul-
tery,
with divers persons, at an earlier period than
that proved against the husband. The wife
then threw herself upon the parish of St. Andrew
by the Wardrobe, from which she received four
shillings per week ; and the husband refusing to
reimburse this sum (because he contended he
was relieved from his liability to maintain her
from the very moment she committed adultery),
he was summoned before Sir Peter Laurie
at Guildhall. Here Mr. Heaton, the bar-
rister, ably supported, by reference to cases, the
position taken up by the husband, and
was permitted by the Alderman to prove
adultery on the p art of the wife ; first,
by the examination of witnesses ; and next,
by reference to the record of the proceedings
in the Ecclesiastical Court. The Alder-
man was completely satisfied on this point,
but having taken the opinion of several, Magis.
trates, as well as of the City Law Authorities,
he ultimately convicted the husband, under the
third section of the Vagrant Act, and committed
him to imprisonment and har 1 labour for one
month. The husband immediately put in bail,
and appealed against' this conviction ..to the
Quarter Sessions, where he was at the expenCe
of taking all his witnesses on two days, and nit
was then adjourned to a third, when the appeal
was called on out of turn, and in the absence of
his Counsel, and it was affirmed, subject, hoW-
ever, to the opinion of the Judges of the Court
of King's Bench, on a special case, admitting
the adultery to be proved.
The case stated the fact of the wife being
chargeable to the parish while the husband was
able wholly to maintain her—the separation of
the parties—and a copy of the record of the
dismissal of the wife's suit for alimony, in con-
sequence of her having committed adultery ; and
it concluded that the question was, whether the
husband was, at the time of the conviction,
legally bound to maintain his wife, within the
meaning of the Vagrant Act ? i.
Mr. Mirehouse and Mr. Patteson were heard
on the 3d of November in support of the con-
viction ; and the last-named Counsel, in the
course of his argument, admitted that, if the
parish had stood in the same situation as an in-
dividual, affording assistance to the wife, it would
have had no claim to indemnification from the
husband.
The Court asked how could the husband be
bound to maintain her if she could not recover
maintenance in an Ecclesiastical Court ? and the
Judges forthwith quashed the conviction, with-
out troubling Mr. Heaton or Mr. Jones, who
were retained for the husband, to rep ly.
Having been put to some expellee (about
401.) in resisting an illegal decision which wag
attempted to be upheld by the long purse of the
Corporation of London, the husband•naturally
thought the Court of Aldermen would, in justice,
refund to him at least a portion of the costs of liti-
gation (as, it has been said, was done in Mr.
Alderman Winchester's case), and he presented a
memorial on the subject, through Sir Peter
Laurie, who, however, shortly afterwards, wrote
to him that the Court of Aldermen did not con-
sider it in their power to comply with his applica
tion, and that his memorial was laid on. the table.
Now, inasmuch as the husband had been:l
compelled to find sureties to pay the exAcnces;,
of the City, in case the Judges should decide:,
ignorance
whi:vhe
against him, certainly et , justice and the'
honour of the Corporati..;;de.manded that the
then
from
in
o m fairnesstmlishould be reimbursed the experices and costs he
had been put to, through the ignorance of the
City Law Autho
Judges deemed too clear for argument. How f,
isin
to rescue the characters of the
imputation
of
a pin
ever,
n con serjeant (Denman), and the
present Coroner of London, whose opting • 151
were in accordance with that afterwards pro-
nounced by the Judges,