Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1908 — WANTS DIVORCE. [ARTICLE]

WANTS DIVORCE.

Wife Is Sixteen; Husband Forty-Nine. MARRIED MAY 8; PARTED JULY 19 • • Pitiable Experience of a Mere Child, If the Statements In the Divorce Complaint Are True. Ethel Poince, a sixteen-year-old wife, has applied for a divorce In the Jasper circuit court, after having lived two months and eleven days with her husband. The marriage license was granted In this county, her father, Ellison Canbe, appearing In person and giving his consent to the marriage. The license record states that the girl was born in Benton county, Ind., Feb. 6, 1892, and the man to whom she was married, Enoch M. Poince, was born In DeKalk county, .Ind., June 20, 1869. His occupation was given as that of a teacher, and his residence as Wheatfield. This was his first marriage. The complaint charges—whether true or not we are not prepared to state —that only two days after the marriage the husband—whom she alleges told her he was 39 years old but whom she has since learped was 49—began to abuse her, struck her once or twice with his fist and has charged her with being intimate with another man, called her unprintable names, etc., which she alleges are false.

What an experience for a child of such tender years, whether the charges are half true or not. Here is a mere child married to a man old enough to be her grandfather, and with her parents consent, too. We have in Indiana a law that prohibits the granting of a marriage license to children under 18 years of a*ge for the female and 21 years for the male, except with the consent of the parent the female may marry at 16 and the male at 18, but these youthful marriages nearly always turn out bad and the contracting parties are old men or old women at 35 or 40 years of age. We can hardly conceive of the motives that would actuate parents to give their consent to the marriage of mere children, but when they agree to let a young girl of sixteen be linked to a man forty or fifty years of age the case is indeed deplorable. When a girl or a boy of such an age get the idea into their heads that they want to get married, and that right away quick, too, they should be forcibly laid over the parental knee and the thick side of a single applied where it will do the most good. And there ought to be a law punishing parents who will give their consent to these child \narriages. , This girl-wife, if her plea be granted by the court, will be a divorced woman at 16! We hear a great deal about the child marriages in heathen countries but too little is said against those at our own door.