§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
863§ THE EARL OF ABERDEEN, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, its object was to afford additional legal protection to women whose husbands had deserted them, so that their after-acquired property should be secured to them; and this he thought the Bill did in a very simple and effectual manner. He was sorry to say that the instances in which wives were deserted by their husbands in Scotland were much more numerous than might be supposed; and to show the hardships to which women who had been so deserted were subjected, he might mention that in one particular case a woman who had carried on a small business after she had been deserted by her husband, having unfortunately lost her house by fire, the husband returned and claimed and obtained the whole of the insurance money, and this reduced her again to poverty. As the law at present stood, there was no redress in such cases except by means of an application to the Court of Session, and that was a process which was too expensive to be made use of by the poorer class of people. The Bill gave power to the Sheriff to adjudicate in such cases, and thus it would provide a simple and effective remedy in all such cases. The noble Earl concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.
§ Motion agreed, to; Bill read 2a accordingly and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.