115 Mo. App. 179 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1905
(after stating the facts). — Our present statute authorizing divorce and enumerating the canses therefor, among other things, provides that the wife may be divorced “when the husband shall be guilty of such conduct as to constitute him a vagrant within the meaning of the law respecting vagrants. [Sec. 2921, R. S. 1899.] The present phraseology of the statute as above quoted, first appeared in the revision of 1865, chapter 14, section 1, page 460. The idea, however, rendering the vagrancy of the husband a cause for divorce in this State did not originate in the statutes of 1865. It first appeared in the divorce laws of Missouri of 1845, section 1, of “An act concerning Divorce and Alimony.” [R. S. 1845, p. 424.] The language of the statute there to be found on the subject is: “Or when the husband shall be guilty of such conduct as to constitute him a
“Every able-bodied person who shall be found loitering or rambling about, not having wherewithal to maintain himself by some visible property, and who doth not betake himself to labor or some honest calling to procure a livelihood; and able-bodied persons who are found begging, and who quit their houses, and leave their wives and children without the means of subsistence, shall be deemed and treated as vagrants.” [R. S. 1845, sec. 1, chap. 181, p. 1070.]
It is apparent then, that the vagrancy in the mind of the Legislature, when such was first made a cause for divorce in this State, was that defined in the section above quoted and none other, for the divorce law specifically referred to this, the first section of the act concerning vagrants, and as said before, this section remained in the law of this State, substantially the same, running through all of the various revisions up to 1889, where it appeared as section 8846. In 1893, however, the Supreme Court, in the case of In re Thomas, 117 Mo. 83, 22 S.W. 863,declared a succeeding section of that act, the section providing for the advertisement and hiring out of such vagrants, unconstitutional, and in 1897 the Legislature saw fit to and did repeal so much of the act on the subject, then chapter 169 of the ^Statutes of 1889, as remained. [See Laws 1897, p. 239.] And thus, this enactment to which our divorce law on the subject orig
From this historical review of the subject, it is obvious that when the idea of the vagrancy of the husband was first incorporated into the divorce law, it had reference only to the vagrancy defined in the first section
The criminal statute referred to, so far as it is pertinent to this case, reads: “Every person, . . . and every able-bodied married man, who shall neglect or refuse to provide for the support of his family . . . shall be deemed a vagrant.” [Sec. 2228, R. S. 1899.] It seems clear to us that the above quoted provisions of this statute, when read in the light of common knowl