FULL TEXT: A Paris divorce costs £60, a gun costs £1 Europe is in a state of excitement, husbands are worried. The International League for the Protection of Human Rights [Liga für Menschenrechte] is planning to do something. France is the centre of a righteous moral volcano and her entire manhood is going into conference.
Frenchwomen have turned the trick; they have found a,
substitute for divorce. Cheaper, easier, far more amusing than the antiquated
process of legal proceedings, with its hazardous outcome, the new French vogue
has taken a firm hold on womanhood in that land of liberty, equality and
fraternity.
“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, reads the
Scriptures and Madame la Franchaise, with the directness of intuition which her
sex boasts, has modernised and applied the lesson; “If thine husband offend
thee, snuff him out.”
A simple formula and easy to remember.
Marital freedom a la francaise is, we repeat, an easily
acquired status. The popular method costs only 126 francs or about £1, a little
publicity which is invariably gratis, a few hours of good play acting before a
jury, and at the very most a brief period of time as a guest of the government.
~ Bright Reading for Husbands. ~
The 126 francs will purchase a small but efficient
automatic. This be taken to bed and carefully concealed under a pillow. When
the offending spouse is quite asleep (preferably from an excessive use of
alcohol) a steady hand can do the business in a second. Even the frailest and
most timid of the sex can put the tyrant out of commission permanently by using
up the contents of the gun. Variation can be obtained by choosing a more
dramatic moment, and this is considered preferable, for it makes an acquittal
easy for the jury. The procedure which is recommended as ideal is to catch the
brute in the act of beating a child or in the company of a friend’s wife. This
naturally assures a quick trial, favourable publicity and a speedy release. It
is highly approved by the criminal courts and gives a jury an opportunity to
enjoy the full pathos and sentimentality of the affair.
The facts are these: In 1920 no loss than forty-seven
Frenchwomen shot, poisoned or gassed their husbands into oblivion with virtual
impunity. During the present year, up to July 1, a total of thirty-eight have
taken advantage of the new liberation scheme, and indications are that all
records will be broken before the New Year’s bells ring out.
~ Deliriously Spectacular. ~
Reviewing a few of the cases, some are deliciously
spectacular. Notable is that of Mme. Desotrat who secured her freedom last
December. Her husband was the common or garden variety of drunkard. He beat
her, starved, harassed and brutalised her and was generally disagreeable.
Knowing that the divorce courts in France are costly and nearly inaccessible
since they had been overcrowded by Americans seeking solitary bliss, and that
French legislation had made the old-fashioned divorce a difficult business,
Mme. Desotrat formed her campaign along the sure and methodical lines outlined
above.
She bought herself a gun – a neat, powerful automatic. She
applied to a professor of firearms and took seven lessons. With the confidence
that comes of familiarity with a weapon she bided her time until one night
Desotrat came home in a particularly villainous mood. In the room with the
couple was her mother-in-law who was – perhaps fortunately—blind. With this
perfect setting for a crime prepared, she allowed his natural disagreeableness
to assert itself until she should reach a high point of righteous indignation.
Then she fired seven shots, one for each lesson, into the midriff of the cruel
man. It was over in a trice. There she was free – save for the short legal
formality which must follow.
~ Simple – Efficient – Easy. ~
At the trial her mother-in-law was a witness. She had heard
quarrelling but had seen nothing. Mme. Desotrat shed tears in the court. The
jury also shed a few tears in sympathy. Her lawyer pleaded crime passionel, the
justifiable; elimination of a brute. She was forced to pay damages amounting to
a few pounds and to meditate a few months in a state hotel of justice. That was
that: Simple, efficient, easy.
The International. League for the Protection of Human Rights
[Liga für Menschenrechte]
with its headquarters in Vienna, is being deluged with letters from French male
citizens who arc genuinely convinced that it is no longer a matter of
protecting the fragile sex against masculine intrusion, but quite the reverse.
It is pointed out that not even beauty is necessary to soften the hearts of
judges and juries when a woman who kills for love or for her happiness is in
the dock. Editorial writers call this new conception of a “right to kill” a
menace to civilisation which must at all costs be overcome.
[George Seldes, “Divorce By Murder.” Favoured By Frenchwomen
- Sentimental Juries’ Leniency Menace To Civilisation,” syndicated
(A.A.N.S.), The Auckland Star (New Zealand), Nov. 10, 1930, p. 18]
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