JUDGMENTBY: TERRELL, AG CJ (FMS), AITKEN, J

TERRELL, AG CJ (FMS) This is an appeal from the decision of the learned Chief Justice rejecting the petition on the ground that the Court had no jurisdiction, under the provisions of the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Acts 1926 and 1940, to entertain the petition. The learned Chief Justice having heard all the witnesses, expressed the opinion that but for the want of jurisdiction the petitioner would have been entitled to a decree nisi. The appeal is by the petitioner, and as there is no cross-appeal by the respondent or the co-respondent, the findings of the Court below must be accepted, and the only matter for the consideration of the appellate Court is the short point of jurisdiction.

Sec. 1, sub-s, 1 proviso (c) of the Act as amended and with the necessary adaptions contemplated by s. 5 of the 1940 Act as implemented by the Straits Settlements Divorce Jurisdiction Order in Council 1936, reads as follows:--

"No such Court shall grant any relief under this Act except in cases

where ... the places where the parties last resided together was in the

Straits Settlements."

The facts as set out in the judgment in the Court below are that the petitioner and the respondent are domiciled in England. They were married in Shanghai in 1926. The petitioner came to Singapore in 1930, and has been living at the Seamens Institute in Singapore since 1930. In February 1939 the respondent, who had been living in Shanghai, came to Singapore in response to a letter which she received from the co-respondent with whom she had been friendly in Shanghai and who was then in Singapore. The respondent never lived with the petitioner at the Seamens Institute. It is doubtful whether she could have lived with him there. Certainly there was insufficient accommodation for the adopted daughter Tessie, a girl of 171/2 who also arrived from Shanghai in March 1939. Accordingly the petitioner made other arrangements for the respondents lodging and keep. At first she lived in a boarding house. The following month she took a small house in Institution Hill. The petitioner paid the rent and paid for her maintenance. The learned Chief Justice says later in his judgment:--

"A reconciliation was effected between husband and wife, and for a time

they lived on friendly relations, and what I might call a normal

married life, except that they lived in separate houses, an arrangement

which I think was necessitated from the arrival of the respondents

adopted daughter in March 1939, as the petitioners quarters in the

Seamens Institute were not very ample. At any rate although Mrs.

Willis would have preferred to live with her husband, she acquiesced in

the arrangement about having separate establishments."

These are really the only facts which need be considered for the purpose of this appeal. It should be mentioned that during the hearing of the petition no objection to the jurisdiction was raised by either party, and that it was only after the conclusion of all the evidence that the point was suggested by the learned Chief Justice himself, and was subsequently argued before him.

I do not think that the English authorities cited by Dr. Withers Payne have very much relevance. The case relied on by the learned Chief Justice was Rex v The Inhabitants of Norwood 2 QB 457. That was a case to determine the liability of a parish under the Poor Law Acts. The Court was considering Statutes under which a man could only have one residence or settlement. Under other Acts, e.g. for example Acts dealing with Parliamentary votes, a man may have more than one residence, and if he maintains a residence for his family and servants, he may be entitled to vote even though he never sleeps there at all (see the Tewkesbury case 135 ER 1, 5.

The point which arises in the present case is not whether the husband had one or more residences in Singapore, but whether husband an

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