.ltMatrimonial Causes Bill

The Times,
3 May 1923: parliamentary report
 
MAJOR ENTWISTLE (Kingston-on-Hull, L.), in moving the second reading of the Matrimonial Causes Bill, which proposes to give women the right of divorce on the ground of their husband's adultery, said that he realized the difficulties which faced any private member who introduced a Bill, but he was sanguine enough to hope that this measure had a very good chance of becoming part of the statute law of the country.  In the first place, it was a matter of simple justice and equity: secondly, he thought the measure commanded very general support in the House: and, thirdly, it was practically universally demanded by the women of the country.  It was a complement of the legislation which had been recently passed recognizing the equality of the sexes.  No one could doubt the right of women to be placed on an equality with men in regard to the matrimonial tie.  The days had gone by when a wife could be regarded as her husband's chattel.
  
The present state of English law gave a husband complete licence to commit adultery with impunity.  There were many cases where a husband lived notoriously in continuous adultery with another woman, and the wife had no remedy whatever under the law.  That state of affairs should be brought to an end.  Practically every civilized country in the world, with the exception of Spain, recognized this equal right of the wife to divorce.
  
Mr. FOOT (Bodmin, L.) seconded.  He said most country lawyers would know that the almost invariable comment of women, who were informed that they could not divorce their husbands on the ground of their misdeeds, was:- "That is the result of a law made by a House of Commons composed of men."  Because there were so few women members of the House there was a greater obligation to do justice as between one sex and the other.
  
Mr. D. HERBERT (Watford, U.), moving an amendment for the rejection of the Bill, said he felt it was not desirable that the marriage contract should be terminable and dissolvable by the consent of the parties.
  
"Equality between the sexes" was one of those catch phrases which were often ignorantly used, and, as in this case, in regard to matters to which it did not really apply.  They might have equality and identity of treatment between man and man or woman and woman, but they could never make a man a woman or a woman a man, nor could they ever get over those physical differences between man and woman which were factors in the question of divorce.  Was there any member of the House, the father of a son and a daughter who would regard the sin of adultery by his son in the same light as the sin of adultery by his daughter?
  
Mr. CAIRNS (Morpeth, Lab.), in supporting the Bill, said that women to-day were filling every post in the country, and he would not be surprised if in the future we had a woman Prime Minister.  A man who committed adultery should not be allowed to live in the same house with a pure woman, and vice versa.  There was no divorce among the miners in his district, but when they looked at the London newspapers, they found column after column filled with marriages that were not made in heaven, but in hell.  He believed in equality for men and women.
  
SIR H. CLARK (Scottish Universities, U.), in opposing the Bill, said that equality between the sexes was a dicturn that had one fatal objection-it was not true to human nature.  If a man committed adultery he did not introduce a bastard into the household of his wife.  If a woman was an adulterer she made the man the legal father of a bastard.  To his mind marriage was a tie that ought to be permanent through life.
  
Mr. RAWLINSON (Cambridge University, U.), thought the Bill, as it stood, would not meet a very large number of genuine cases.  But as an eminent Judge once said of law generally, cheap divorce was like cheap gin, people would often be better without it.  What did women of the working class of 40 years and over think of this cheap divorce?  They said their man was their man, and they were going to stick to him, right or wrong, to the end.  He was opposed, in the interest of society and the State, to any weakening of the marriage tie.
  
Mr. HEMMERDE (Crewe, Lab.) said that inequality existed because the laws were originally devised by monks and men, and not by women.
  
CAPTAIN A. EVANS (Leicester, E., N.) said he spoke as a young married man, who perhaps was inexperienced in life, but he thought he also represented the view of the man in the street when he said he failed to understand why a wife should not be granted a divorce for her husband's misconduct when it was granted to a husband for his wife's misconduct.  It was said that temptation was harder on a man than it was on a woman.  But if a man could not discipline himself he did not deserve the most beautiful creature that God had created.  


.lcThe Matrimonial Causes Bill was one measure which gave women greater equality with men in the years after the first world war. This Bill, put forward by a Major Entwistle, aimed to abolish the "double standard", and allow women the same access to divorce as men.

.llThe Law: Legal status
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.lsWR01:WR01_03S
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