Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1895 — EAST WAY TO DIVORCE [ARTICLE]

EAST WAY TO DIVORCE

INDIANA- LEADS AND DECREES ARE VALID. Hoosiers Were the to Recognize A the Utility of Flexible Laws and to Make Escape from Marriage a Matter of Little Difficulty. Statistics of Several Counties. A recent issue of the Chicago Tribune had the following to say about the divorce industry in this State: While certain well-defined rules govern >.ll other trades, fixing their locations and Establishing their centers, those of the divorce industry seem to be as migratory as a strong-legged tramp and as uncertain as the marble in a roulette wheel. Indiana was*the first,.State whietoexer recognized the possibilities bf mutual profit between suitors and residents in lax divorce laws and for n long time had a monopoly of the business. Then the laws of Illinois were so aniended that tlie- marriage bonds could be more easily untied and Uhlcago had quite a boom. It?rH(T- - vantages as a piaoe of residence during the year of waiting were quickly recognized. But lately the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Oklahoma- offered inducements ho person seeking a divorce could resist. But it is one thing to secure trade and another to hold it, and so much fault has been found with the divorce goods offered on Western bargain counters that their custom is deserting them and now Indiana’s trade is looking up again, with every prospect of an increasing and wellmaintained boom. On the September docket of the Parke County, Ind., Circuit Court, just ended, the divorce cases were one-eighth the entire number of-cases set for trial. In Clay County there were thirty-eight divorce cases tried during the September term, while in Vigo County there were four times as many as iii Parke. There are already five cases filed for the November docket in Parke County. For the February term of this year there were seven, while six divorce suits found places on the"’ April docket, making a total of twenty-nine in the Parke County courts thus far this year. Forty—Count ’Enii —ff The records in the clerk’s office for Noveinbcf show forty divorces during theyear. In the 1893 docket this record sinksinto insignificance. ■ out of the 155 cases tried there being forty-nine of them foi divorce. o,r nearly one-third of the entire list. Of these (he February term put up six of them. April eleven. September brought in r.eventeen. while by November fourteen more dissatisfied couples wanted to be released. The divorce busi- ' ness in Parke County was only in its infancy in 1891. and in 1892 it only brought up sixteen cases during the year, September, with seven petitions, being "the heaviest month. With twenty-nine divorces on record in Parke County at the present date, the year 1895 will outstrip nil its predecessors before it gives up the fight on Dec. 31. From every other county in the State, where the September term of court has. dosed, comes the report of an amaz-ing-number of divorces on trial. The population of the county is equal (to one one-lmndredth of the population of the State bf Indiana. Taking the eleven divorces in the September court as an average: which is a fair and conservative estimate for the State as a whole, it means dial there were 1.100 divorce suits oil trial in the Indiana September courts jus I closed. They represent 2,2oo’parties to the suit. An army big enough to defend the State from any military intrusion. If this great company of disappointed mortals eould be got together in a ikijnd of refitting school, with sly little Cupid as the chief instructor. it is believed fully 800 new couples could be made from the old 1,100 disunions and misfits. " Hoosierdom's Way of Divorcing. Upon investigation it is found that the common method of procuring a divofte in Western Indiana is to have the clerk of the court make out a notice of non-resi-dence. The fee for this process belongs to the clerk, but it happens that three times but of five he never gets it, and it is also a fact that nearly all divorce cases are worried along through the courts on a dead-beat process. Then when the complainant, or attorney-, asks the clerk for the papers, he has no choice but to give them, and place the Case on the docket ready for'fi hearing. Next a notice is taken to the printing office of a paper of general circulation, and the editor is asked 'to print it four successive times. When court convenes the attorney asks this same editor for a statement showing the notice to have been printed four times, whicli statement: is given the court. Here the dead-beating procesk comes in again, and the Parke County papers have inaugurated a crusade against the practice. claiming that not one of four of these divorce complainants ever pay for the publication of the notice. They say that hereafter all notices must be paid for before they will testify to their having appeared, which testimony is absolutely essential to every granting of a divorce. The attorneys are also steering shy of these manifold divorce cases, stating that of the ten to twenty in eydry term of the Circuit Court uot more than half of them are good pay. Anti still further the court officials are getting a little weary of this divorce business on the ground that it is largely due to these divorce suits that so mist-h important court matter must be subjected to sundry docketings, and, in many eases, hold over from term to term owing to a lack of time to hear it. Thus the moral reformers, the editors, the court clerks, the lawyers, the court officials in Indiana have at last struck a sympathetic chord and it will bind them all together on this divorce question. The average time of these divorces is found to be within three years after mariage. Minor State News. Aaron F. Shimer, of Spencer County, is wearing a medal ns the tallest soldier in the Union army during the late war. He is 56 years old and 6 feet 6 inehef lligi). jry Dr. D. M. Shively, of Yorktown, whi. attending a patient, accidentally ; fell am: broke his leg. While the Pearsons were playing at Lebanon Miss Alice Louise Perine, the soubrette. attached the company property for S6O unpaid salary. She also filed against Charles Phillips, the comedian, for assault amkbattery, and Phillips was fined $17.25. 'T’he manager had funds, but .he declined to pay under duress. EVentunlly, however, a compromise was reached, the company agreeing to retain the soubrette until Kalamazoo, Mich, was reached.