WILSON-DE-ROZE Vs. WILSON-DE-ROZE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case, I made a formal decree nisi for dissolution of marriage on Friday, but, inasmuch as the circumstances raise questions of some public importance, I intimated that I would deliver a considered judgment today.

(2.) The petition is a wife's petition for dissolution of marriage, on the ground of the respondent's adultery, cruelty, and desertion. The facts can be briefly stated. The parties, who are domiciled in British India, were married on 3 October 1916; there have been two children of the marriage, a son born in December 1917, who is still surviving, and another child who was born in 1919 and died in infancy. The petitioner complains that not only did her husband treat her with great brutality, but, from the very outset, he neglected to maintain her or her children. She was compelled, as early as 1918, when her elder child was ill, to seek the hospitality of her sister Mrs. Cove. After the child recovered she was willing to return to her husband, but he refused to take her back and from the middle of 1919, he absented himself and has not contributed an anna to the petitioner's support. The second child was born shortly after his departure in October 1919. I hold, in the circumstances, that the respondent s, conduct amounts to desertion. I also accept the petitioner's evidence as to cruelty. She says her husband frequently assaulted her, especially when he was drunk, and in this she has been corroborated by her "sister, Mrs. Cove, and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Spry.

(3.) The important part of her story is the sequence of events following the desertion. It is quite obvious that the petitioner's family has little or no means, and I believe her when she say3 that her parents are penniless and are supported by what their children can allow them.