Is Marriage a Failure ?

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 280, 30 March 1889, Page 3

Is Marriage a Failure ?

A VILLAIN THAT OUGHT BUT CANNOT BE HUNG.

Sidnev. Porter v. Porter, a case for judicial separation brought by the wife, was concluded at Sydney recently. The evidence of the petitioner disclosed most brutal conduct on the part of her husband. His Honor, in giving judgment, said that the only question was that of cruelty, on which grounds the petitioner sought for a judicial separation from her husband. The evidence proved undoubtedly that cruelty of an almost inhuman character had been practised by the respondent towards his wife—cruelty which made it appear that the respondent was one of those domestic tyrants who in the privacy of his home thought he had the right to treat his wife in a way in which no man of feeling would treat a dog. His Honor then referred to the evidence as to his shooting, hanging, and whipping his dogs and beating his horse to death. That was uncontradicted, and any man who would treat dumb animals in that way would treat a human being in a similar way. The story told.by the wife was one of long-enduring patience, bearing up against a husband's cruelty for years. Here now is a case where a woman was driven to desperation, and almost to losing her reason from long-suffering. She had endured and endured in silence. It is almost incredible that any man could be found so utterly hardened as was this man towards his wife. He had flogged her when she was ill, he had flung filty water over her, he had struck her with a stock whip, and struck her with a buggy whip, when from long exhaustion and suffering from sandy blight, the agony of which only those know who have endured it, she had fallen asleep in a chair, and did not hear her baby fall out of bed. Time after time he spat on her and repeatedly kicked her, and once so severely that the child she was then bearing was found to be marked at birth in the same position of the body. Such cruelty of conduct on the part of any man was degrading, and deserved the reprobation of every right-minded man in the community. Respondent did not attempt to contradict the evidence. They could scarcely believe that any human' being short of a savage would be guilty of treating his wife in this way, but in addition he instructed his counsel to ask insulting questions of a lady who had been a friend of his wife's from the first, and was her friend now. A decree nisi would be granted, with costs, the wife to have custody of all the children, as respondent was unworthy to have charge of any creature that could suffer pain, even a dog, much less a human being. Alimony at the rate of £3 per week was granted, as respondent is in well-to-do circumstances, being owner of Gorah Run, where the brutality was committed.