CARTOON - SILENCE IS NOT ALWAYS GOLDEN - AND THE LAW MAKES A POOR CUPID

This cartoon could reference one of two divorce cases that Justice Robert Bruce Burnside had recently presided over. Both cases were heard in March and in both cases the husband had requested that the court order the wife to provide conjugal rights despite the wife wanting nothing to do with the husband. In both cases Justice Burnside refused to grant this and states the court could not force the wife to resume cohabitation or grant conjugal visits and that he did not believe the interference of a judge would be at all successful in bringing the couple back together. Burnside firmly believed that the less a judge had to do with peoples personal life the better.

This cartoon comments on a recent divorce case petition where the position was as follows:
That Husband and Wife live in the same house and the Wife would not speak to her Husband.
His Honour, Justice Burnside commented that:
He could not force a Wife to live with her Husband and not do the things alleged of her. He could not order her to love her Husband and to speak to him.
In the 1920s around 1500 couple a year got divorced and there was still some social stigma attached to it. At the time Western Australia and South Australia had some of the most liberal divorce laws in the country.