I now come to the main issue before-me. It has been a difficult matter to come to a enclusion on the evidence produced before me in this case.
One body of witnesses have been swearing that black is as black as can be while another body of witnesses have been swearing that that black is as white as the driven snow. There has been a very large amount of exaggeration and lack of accuracy on both sides and it has been my duty, unfortunately to reduce these inexacti tudes tothe level of the plain truth.
First of all as regards the cruelty. It is true that irritating conduct unaccompanied by actual violence but carried to such a point that the wife's health is endangered is sufficient (Mytton v. Mytton L.R. 11 P.D. 141). But in that case there was overwhelming medical evidence that the wife's health had been most seriously endangered and in fact she became serious! ill. In Kelley Kelley LR. QP.
D. (186) the husband had never struck his wife but had rendered her life impossible by isolating her from all friends, acquaintances and relatives, accusing her of wickedness she was not guilty of, and by refusing her the obligations of matrix many, so as to render a_ serious malady imminent.
In Russell v. Russell (1897) L.R. A.O. 395 the Court of Appeal before which the case had originally come laid down a definition of cruelty (Lindley, & Lopes LLJ) "There must be danger to life, limb, or health, bodily or mentally or a reasonable apprehension of it, constitute legal cruelty."
This defimtion was much criticized by the Lords, and Lord Ash-bourne in his judgement stated he preferred the definition of Lord Stowell in Evans v. Evans. 1. Haggard's Consistory Reports—3: "There must be grave and weighty causes for the finding of cruelty. That which merely wounds the feelings is in few cases to be admitted and that which falls short of personal danger is with the greatest caution to be admitted"
Peritioner's ALLEGATIONS.
What ard the facts that are before us in this case? and how is the evidence of the petitioning wife supported? For it is for the petitioner to make out her case.
They were married on June 24, 1917, and Grace Cohen, the petitioner, says that a few months afterwards, he began to ill-treat her, swearing at her, using bad language and picking up things and threatening to throw them at. her. She states she endured this for a year and then on August 10, 1918, because she had merely' asked him to take her to the gardens, he pushed her downstairs, she recovered herself, ran, he ran after, and caught her by the hair, pulled her into the room, threw a chair at her, which she avoided, struck her on the arms and threatened to kill her: that) she screamed for help and he put his hand over her mouth but she got away: that she
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.