Hanbury divorce (1892)

Post date: Jul 10, 2012 2:41:18 PM

Extract from Whitstable Times, 26 March 1892:

WATERINGBURY. The Divorce Case.—The hearing of this suit was concluded in the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division, before Sir Charles Butt and a special jury, Thursday. was a petition presented by the wife, praying for the dissolution of her marriage on the ground of the alleged cruelty and misconduct her husband, Mr. E. O. Hanbury, partner in a firm of brewers, of Wateringbury. denied the charges, and pleaded insanity. Mr. Inderwick, Q.C. and Mr. Deane appeared for the petitioner: Mr. Lockwood, Q.C., Mr. Bayford, Q.C.. and Mr. Witt Q.C., for the respondent. The case was remarkable as being the first in which insanity had been pleaded by a respondent as a defence to an action for the dissolution of marriage. In the present instance the respondent, Mr. Hanbury, a brewer, was admittedly a kind and well-conducted man except when under the influence of liquor and insane. On his part it was alleged that his intemperance was caused by recurrent insanity, and the other hand that the insanity was due to intemperance. Sir C. Butt, in charging the jury, pointed out there was no evidence hereditary insanity in Mr. Hanbury's family, and said he considered that the plea was not a good one. The jury found for the petitioner, and the Judge pronounced a decree nisi with costs.

The possibility of divorce, at a price but without a special Act of Parliament, came from the 1857 Divorce Act which allowed men to cite a wife’s adultery as a cause for divorce; women had to show their husband had engaged in bestiality, bigamy, incest, rape or cruelty as well. During this period only an average of 239 divorces a year in England and Wales took place