English Justice

MERCY FOR THIS MOTHER! cried London's Daily Sketch. Seldom, said Lord Beaverbrook's Evening Standard, has there been a more striking example of "how the law, when administered with insufficient humanity, can not only condone injustice but actively inflict it." Seldom, either, had Britain as a whole been more concerned over the strange workings of some of its quainter laws.

The latest shocking example of Britain's inhumane laws involved Eftihia Christos, a 39-year-old Greek Cypriot who came to Britain 20 years ago. In 1953, after her husband died of tuberculosis, Eftihia got an allowance from the National Assistance Board, but it was too meager to support her four children, three of whom also suffered from TB. And so, in order to buy eggs and milk for them, Eftihia Christos began working far into each night, sewing hooks and eyes on dresses. Because she failed to report her extra -L-2 to -L-3 weekly earnings to the National Assistance Board, as required, Magistrate Geoffrey Rose, 69, sentenced Widow Christos to two months in jail for fraud.

The Criminal Kiss. Within 24 hours more than 1,000 dock workers held a mass protest meeting outside the gates of the Royal Albert Dock, delegates from every Ford plant petitioned Home Secretary R. A. ("Rab") Butler, and the Bishop of Southwark denounced Magistrate Rose's sentence as "savage and inhuman." Unfortunately, the Widow Christos' case was not the only one. British newspapers were still quivering over the case of a young engaged couple who were haled into court for committing "an act of lewd, obscene and disgusting nature such as to cause offense to diverse of Her Majesty's subjects." The couple's actual crime was nothing more than to kiss each other good night in a parked car. They spent their honeymoon money for their defense and were acquitted--but the judge refused to award them the costs of their defense. Similarly, last week American Actor Horace Marshall, who played God in the BBC-TV production of Green Pastures, was acquitted of living off the earnings of a prostitute, but though the London magistrate dismissed the case before Marshall even finished testifying, he refused to award him -L-300 in court costs on the ground that the police had the "duty to test the matter before the courts." "Again," bristled the Sketch, "the innocent one pays." What made the laws work in such dreadful manner? Last week, in a special report by British jurists calling for a complete inquiry into the nation's laws, worried Britons got an answer.

Spare the Hops. The fact is, said the report, that many of Britain's laws go back to the Middle Ages when it was far more serious to disturb the economic and social feudal order than to kill or maim a man. The maximum penalty for blaspheming, destroying hops, burning a haystack, or "maliciously damaging a river bank" is still life imprisonment. But the maximum penalty for forcing a child to live in a brothel is six months, and having sexual intercourse with a child or maiming a person by reckless driving can bring only two years. In spite of gradual reforms, it is still worse to steal a dog (18 months) than to attack a neighbor (one year).

As protests mounted over the Christos case, hapless Magistrate Rose announced: "I do not regret my decision. It was a painful one, but it was just." A few days later the magistrate suddenly fell ill and died. "An unfortunate coincidence," said his physician. So was the discovery that the day before he sentenced the Widow Christos to jail for her night sewing, Magistrate Rose had fined a man -L-10 ($28) for indecently assaulting a six-year-old girl.

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