The Law and the Poor

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

Here is another picture—John married Catharine in 1896. There was one child. When the infant was nine months old Catharine was forced to leave her husband on account of his drunken habits. The child went to its grandmother and Catharine went to service for seven years. After that time she met Charles, a widower, with one child. Being a brave and sensible woman she went to live with him as his wife. They have two children of their own now, one is three years old and the other six months. They have a good home and are very happy, and would like to be married if the law allowed it.

Now all that religion has to tell us about these cases is that marriages are made in heaven and that heaven having once made these two utter messes of human affairs, it is impious for human hands and minds to try and mitigate the evil for which heaven is responsible. I wish those for whom these old-world blasphemies have merely a folklore interest would leave this so-called religion mumbling in its outer darkness and apply their practical minds to so reforming the law that the lives of Alfred and Anna and Catharine and Charles and their innocent babies, and hundreds of other good men and women and innocent children, might no longer have to live in this civilised country under any legal disability or under any social shadow of ignominy or shame. In practice these folk very often do marry again without the blessing of Church or State, as in the last-cited case, and live useful and virtuous lives, bringing up happy children in good homes. The law should assist such citizens in the interest of the State, for the community want good homes and healthy children leading happy lives.

The recommendation of the Majority Commission in this matter is a very conservative one. It is that habitual drunkenness found incurable after three years from a first order of separation should be a ground for divorce. This, coupled with divorce for cruelty or desertion for three years and upwards, would certainly cover some of the sadder cases that were brought to the notice of the Commissioners.

The right of the State to refuse divorce in the case of the insanity of a party to a marriage seems hardly arguable. Here is one of the many sad stories. Norah married a soldier twenty years ago. Fourteen years ago he was taken to an asylum, where he still is, and Norah applied for relief. She was offered scrubbing work at the workhouse from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at nine shillings a week and some bread, or two-and-six a week and six pounds of bread, with liberty to take in two lodgers. Norah, to be with her children, chose the latter. John was one of the lodgers. He found his way to Norah’s heart by buying presents of boots and clothing for the children. And so Norah and John became man and wife, save and in so far as the law refused them that status. As Norah told a lady visitor, “I suppose you think it was wrong for me to drift into our present way of living, but it was such a struggle and he was so good to us. I have never been killed with wages, but we are as comfortable as we can be. I often wish we were free to marry because we do not like our children being illegitimate, and people look down on a woman so, if she lives as I am doing.”

In this matter it is cheering to know that the archbishop and his learned adherents in their Minority Report are prepared to make some concession. I state this with pleasure, remembering the wise words of that good old Welsh parson, the Rev. John Hopkins, of Rhoscolyn, who said, “Indeed, Judge Parry, remember this, one must be charitable even to dissenters.” A fortiori one should be just even to archbishops, and it is hopeful that in the matter of insanity where one of the parties is either of unsound mind at the time of the marriage or in a state of incipient mental unsoundness which becomes definite after six months of marriage and the suit is commenced within a year of marriage the Minority Report timidly proposes that such a marriage might be annulled.

What the difference in principle may be between the cases of a mad husband who has been married for six months and a madder husband who has been married for six years the learned ones do not inform us, but we may regard it as a sign of grace that there are some matrimonial miseries that seem to these hard-hearted pundits worthy of sympathy and relief.

No protest seems to be made by the Church against the go-as-you-please divorce methods of to-day among the upper classes, but if divorce by consent does not exist among the rich it shows great rectitude and self-denial on their part. One often reads of a case like the following one. Mrs. A. is neglected by her husband, who leaves her. She asks him to return and he refuses. She files a petition for restitution of conjugal rights. The Court makes a fourteen days’ order on the undefended petition. I wonder if such an order has ever been obeyed or was ever intended to be obeyed. On receiving the order Mr. A. writes that he is not coming back, but that he will be found staying at a certain hotel with another lady under the style of Mr. and Mrs. A. Inquiries are made, and this proving true a divorce petition is filed. This again is undefended and the decree nisi goes as of course.

It is conceivable that such a procedure might be used by two intelligent persons who did not respect the laws of their country as a method of divorcing each other by consent, but I have no doubt that the well-to-do who constantly go through these forms are far too scrupulous in their observance of the letter and spirit of our divorce law to be guilty of anything that could be construed into collusion.

I do not think that in this country, except among wild and fanatical folk and some of the fast set with whom we need not concern ourselves, there is any demand for divorce by mutual consent. But, even if this were enacted, it does not follow, as Montaigne has told us, that it would be used. The idea that a more reasonable system of divorce will lead to a wholesale system of divorces is an absurd folly, a bogey used by ignorant but honest clericals to frighten good people who rather enjoy being scared to death. The fat boys of sociology love to make their victims’ flesh creep, and when they speak of divorce reform constantly suggest that human nature tends to immorality in matrimonial affairs. As a matter of fact human beings naturally prefer marriage and married life where it is at all a successful institution to divorce and divorced life. This is wonderfully illustrated in Belgium where, as M. Henri Mesnil, the French avocat, points out, divorce law “as provided for by the Code Napoléon has remained in force down to the present day: in spite of the long predominance of the Catholic party dissolution of marriage by mutual consent is still possible in that country. I might say that although possible it is a very rare thing. I think only one case of divorce by mutual consent will be found amongst four hundred cases in Belgium.”

Here we have the results of a hundred years’ experience of a European country not unlike our own. It bears out exactly what one would expect, and it is only by ignoring such evidence and referring to the laxity of State procedure in America, without reminding the reader that there is no evidence of any greater laxity in the state of morality there than elsewhere, that the Archbishop of York and his friends can claim that the “preponderating voice of history and experience”—a charming phrase—is in favour of their Minority Report.