Divorce law for the rich sends poor man to jail

Friday, 30 July 2010 00:00

One hundred years ago: clippings from the newspapers of July 30, 1910.

London Free Press. “Canada’s divorce law is for the rich,” says the Free Press. “The poor are compelled to suffer where the well-to-do may find freedom.”

A Toronto court case is cited, in which a bigamist, unable to afford divorce, was given “a sentence of only 90 days in jail” by a sympathetic judge.

As a wild boy, the convicted bigamist fell in with a woman of bad character, and woke up in an alcoholic daze to discover that he was married. He saw her only once in the following 15 years.

Later reformed, “He married a good woman, and their lives were happily spent until the cloud of his earlier marriage reappeared.”

The judge remarked that it was the innocent second wife and her children who now suffer, and that neither she nor her husband would have been disgraced if divorce had been affordable. “The trouble is a man of this kind cannot get a divorce,” the judge remarked. The crown attorney said divorce would cost $1,000 but the judge thought it would cost $2,000—some $300,000 in 2010 money.

“It was agreed that the prisoner was entitled to a divorce. He was without the means of financing his freedom, however, and must pay the penalty in the exposure of his wife to the world’s scorn, not to mention a short term in jail for himself.

“If divorce is possible to an aggrieved party to a marriage, there should be no distinction. The way to divorce should not be made more simple, yet neither should it be necessary that an applicant spend $2,000 to secure legal freedom.”

WEEKLY BATH LAW
Peterborough Review. Any resident of Aurora, Ill., who fails to bathe at least once a week “will be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” under new rules and regulations issued by the city’s Health Department.

DEMENTED DENTIST
Lindsay Post (July 29). Divine revelation played a prominent part in the arrest in Toronto of Dr. J. R. Irish, an aged dentist charged with being insane. The arrest followed a complaint by a patient who consulted Dr. Irish about a tooth.

“The doctor produced a formidable array of forceps and declared he had just had a message from God, that he must extract all the teeth, and that he intended to obey. The patient immediately declared that he, too, had received a message to the effect that he must not have them out that day, but must wait till tomorrow. This appeared to satisfy the doctor, and the extraction was postponed.”