FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43  
44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>   >|  
id. The Court held, was compelled to hold, that the party injured _in view of the law_, had received full compensation for the wrong--and the mother and daughters with no means of redress were left to starve. This was the act of the _representative_ of the wife and daughters to whom we are referred, as a better protector of their rights than they themselves could be. It may properly be added, that if the action had proceeded to judgment without interference from the husband, and such amount of damages had been recovered as a jury might have thought it proper to award, the money would have belonged to the husband, and the wife could not lawfully have touched a cent of it. Her attorney might, and doubtless would have paid it to her, but he could only have done so at the peril of being compelled to pay it again to the drunken husband if he had demanded it. In another case, two ladies, mother and daughter, some time prior to 1860 came from an eastern county of New York to Rochester, where a habeas corpus was obtained for a child of the daughter, less than two years of age. It appeared on the return of the writ, that the mother of the child had been previously abandoned by her husband, who had gone to a western state to reside, and his wife had returned with the child to her mother's house, and had resided there after her desertion. The husband had recently returned from the west, had succeeded in getting the child into his custody, and was stopping over night with it in Rochester on the way to his western home. No misconduct on the part of the wife was pretended, and none on the part of the husband, excepting that he had gone to the west leaving his wife and child behind, no cause appearing, and had returned, and somewhat clandestinely obtained possession of the child. The Judge, following Blackstone's views of husband's rights, remanded the infant to the custody of the father. He thought the law required it, and perhaps it did; but if mothers had had a voice, either in making or in administering the law, I think the result would have been different. The distress of the mother on being thus separated from her child can be better imagined than described. The separation proved a final one, as in less than a year neither father nor mother had any child on earth to love or care for. Whether the loss to the little one of a mother's love and watchfulness had any effect upon the result, cannot, of course, be known. The stat
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43  
44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

mother

 
husband
 

returned

 
daughter
 

result

 

western

 
father
 

thought

 

compelled

 

obtained


custody

 
Rochester
 

daughters

 

rights

 

leaving

 

excepting

 

resided

 
reside
 

appearing

 

succeeded


stopping

 

misconduct

 

desertion

 

recently

 

pretended

 
proved
 
imagined
 

separation

 
Whether
 

effect


watchfulness
 

separated

 

remanded

 

infant

 
required
 

Blackstone

 

clandestinely

 

possession

 
distress
 

administering


making

 
mothers
 

properly

 

referred

 

protector

 
action
 

proceeded

 
damages
 

recovered

 

proper