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Howard W. Sewall Would Not Work to Support a Wife.

Gertrude A. Sewall and Howard W. Sewall were married in this city on January 28, 1888. Yesterday Judge Hunt divorced her on the ground of the husband’s failure to provide, by reason of profligacy and idleness, and quite a story was brought out at the trial.

Sewall was a clerk in a dry-goods store when he married the fair and modest Gertrude, the only child of a doting widowed mother. He was known as a man of exemplary habits. They went to board with her mother. He conscientiously forgot to pay for their board and even endeavored to borrow money from his mother-in-law on the wedding day. He soon lost his position, drifted to Sacramento, Chico and elsewhere, and finally to Seattle, Wash., where he now is, having been a clerk in two banks and being now in the fruit business.

In this business he was also awhile at Chico, from which place he went East with a consignment of fruit, which he sold to advantage, but squandered the money. On return and while attempting to disappear from Chico between two days creditors had him arrested and his sister helped him out of his financial mess and the young wife was taken back home by her mother. In no place apparently could he hold a position more than a mouth or two, and he was chronically bankrupt.

He has only sent his pretty young wife $52 to support herself during the past year, and she has had to depend on her mother, aided by scant earnings as a saleswoman of $4 and $5 a week. Last Christmas he magnanimously sent her a present — a note of $10 — but it was protested, and mother-in-law had to pay note and costs.

This mother-in-law, who appeared to be a treasure in her way, had tried to keep the young couple along in various ways and had offered them a home on her little farm, but the proud spirit of Howard rebelled at this. He would not soil his hands at such menial labor as farming. San Francisco Call, 20 April 1892.¹