Days of future past
Today divorce is a relatively straightforward if expensive undertaking. That said, has anyone seen the new Netflix film Marriage Story?
However much the legal profession dines out on the domestic woes of the middle class these days though, drastic measures were required in eras when a declaration of ‘‘irreconcilable differences’’ meant next to nothing.
In October of 1929, Lottie Mavis Petersen took matters into her own hands. Information supplied by her friend Fanny Dunford, who lived adjacent to a bach on Christchurch’s Salisbury St, confirmed Mrs Petersen’s suspicions about her husband of eight years standing, Arthur Albert Petersen and Jean Featherson, his mistress, known colloquially as ‘‘Pansy’’.
Believing the pair to be canoodling in the bach – which, ironically, rejoiced in the name ‘‘Angel’s Rest’’ – Lottie hatched a cunning plan.
Two friends were recruited: Mrs Dunford and a cricketer.
The latter came with bat in hand. The trio staked out Angel’s Rest for two hours, until they were certain the lovers had settled in for the night.
Lottie had brought a flash light.
The three approached the single room dwelling. The cricketer wielded his willow, smashing the bach’s front window.
Lottie then shone her torch into the resulting hole. As the ever sensitive NZ Truth put it, ‘‘
. . . the tell-tale shaft of light eventually settled on the faces of the erring husband and Pansy ... ’’
Contemporary accounts of the drama reference no consequences for trespass or damage inflicted upon the property. Such things were inconsequential next to the gathering of evidence of infidelity. Faced with the eyewitness testimony of Lottie, Fanny and the anonymous cricketer, the magistrate knew his duty: ‘‘what the wife saw in that room that night beneath the accusing finger of light was sufficient for Judge Adams to sever the matrimonial bonds which Peterson had failed to honour’’.
In Mr Justice Blair’s opinion, hard evidence of infidelity, of the type obtained by Mrs Petersen, was necessary to meet the legal standard.