Some Aspects of Moresby’s

Abduction Case

rE Ralph Corlett '‘abduction case” has been of considerable local interest in Papua-New luinea. (Corlett, a European taxi wner of 30 years’ residence in the 'erritory, paid a native girl’s arents “bride price” and, appar atly because the girl herself was ow in making up her mind, bducted her).

Mr. Justice Kelly fined him £lOO id in summing up said that Corlett ad a good record in the Ter tory but, if he imposed upon him light sentence, it might encourage hers to follow his example—’ though he could imagine few her residents behaving in so tolish a manner.

Interest for Territory residents is it so much the abduction and its mishment, as the moral and legal igle on European men paying a iride price” to the parents of a rl whom they intend to “marry” ider native law. (In his summing ), Mr. Justice Kelly specially did )t deal with the matter of whether irlett was within the law in pay g bride-price for the girl). Are ch marriages to be recognised ?ally, or can the European sub quently discard the girl without e formality of divorce?

There are at least two or three iropean men living in the Port bresby district with a native

“wife”; but many residents of the Territory are of the opinion that if bride-price—that is, the paying of money or goods to a native girl’s parents—were banned for Europeans, few natives would consent to their daughter’s “marrying” a European. In the past, in Papua, there have been Europeans who married native girls legally, under British

law, and in these cases there has invariably been a genuine effort to safeguard the welfare of children of the marriages. Children of bride-price marriages have little hope of such treatment, The laws of cohabitation between European and native were far stricter in the old Mandated Ter ritory than in Papua, and in any

event public opinion was such that .any man suspected of living with a native woman was regarded as a .social outcast.

Since the war, Territory public has either become more •tolerant of peccadilloes of this sort —or some residents have a complete contempt for public opinion.

Miss Daphne Carpenter, who has been State Secretary of the Queens land Girl Guides’ Assn, for 9i years, will leave at end of January or early February for Port Moresby where she will become private secretary to Mrs. D. M. Cleland, wife of the Acting Administrator of Papua-New Guinea.