Year: 1870

In the Circuit Court, Chicago, on We'd
nesday last, Mary Ann Smith filed bill
for divorce from her husband, Benjamin
II. Smith, wealthy farmer in Henry
county, Illinois. The wife's story is told
by the Chicago Tribune:


''The facts which are made to appear by
the bill are, that the parties were married
at Aurora, Kane county, of that State, on
the 22d day of September last, whereupon
they removed to a farm belonging to de-
fendant, at Genesce, where they occupied
his house in company with son of de-
fendant and his wife. They lived together
until the 14th of December, a little less
than three months, when the defendant
vacated the premises and left his family,
the wife remaining in the house with her
stepson and his wife, until the day pre-
ceding Christmas, when she, having sold
some little articles of private personal
property, made her way to Chicago to seek
home with her friends and relatives.


At the time of the marriage the wife
states she was a weak woman, unable to
perform heavy labor, by reason of the eff
fects of broken wrist. She was the OWL
er of some amount of household goods
crockery, beds. bedding-and in the re-
ceipt of pension of 500 from the govern
ment,. the pension expiring, however,
upon Der marriage.


dwelling of her husband, she took with her
her household wares, and found that those
were all that the house afforded; that to
that time the husband had few if any
of such conveniences. She here encount-
cred her first disappointment. 1t is true
that upon the eve of the wedding she pur-
chased for him clean and new shirt in
which he might stand up but she had
supposed that necessity was imposed upon
her because of his widowed condition. in
WHICH she supposed he had nobody to mind
things and attend to matters. When she
joined him this want she expected to sup
ply, so that the spectacle of dirty and rag
ged clothing would thenceforward be un-
known to him in the household.


The disappointment was followed, it is
said, by great cruelty. The woman thus
summarizes these acts. She says that,
notwithstanding the weakness of her
wrist, he compelled her by force, and by
working upon her fears, to do all the house
work in his family of six or seven grown
up persons engaged upon the farm to take
care of, clean and milk eight cows; do the
washing of the family; churn butter and
preserve it-so that by reason of overwork
and pain she became sick. Sick or well,
he refused to allow her to have coffee, tea
or sugar. and provided her only with meat
that had been salted, common vegetables
and corn bread. She became more sick,
and then he refused her the aid of medical
advice or the support of medicines. To
intensity this, he refused to provide her
with clothing rendered necessary by the
approaching and increasing cold Of the
season, forbade her the use of but one
stove, and that in the kitchen, and COM
PEELED her, lily clad and sick, to be up at
early dawn to procure fuel to cook with.
With these acts he belabored her with his
tongue.


Personally the husband is represented to
be unclean to degree. 1t is said of him
that he is so filthy about his person that ver-
min invested him; and yet he forced her
to occupy his room and bed, and that he
refused, from sheer niggardly habit, to pro-
cure clothing, proper food, &c, having in
all his life purchased for her shoe-string
"a poor recompense for the new shirt she
gave him at date of marriage"