Note 417 — Chapter III

Circular of 21st March 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. 3. [418] There had apparently been a doubt as to whether a husband was legally bound to contribute towards the maintenance of a wife who had been removed under legal authority to a lunatic asylum. In 1850 the Central Authority got an Act passed to require him to pay (13 and 14 Vic. c. 101, sec. 4) on the ground that "great hardship has been frequently occasioned to parishes, who have been burthened with the heavy expense of such maintenance without the means of recovering from the husband even a partial reimbursement" (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 16).