D1.8.21: [Untitled]

D1.8.21: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek discusses changes to the colony's 'Colonial Law of Marriage' as the Eastern Districts move to replace Roman-Dutch Law's marriage regimes with those of English Common Law. The latter divests wives of their 'moveables' and any rents and profits from immovable property in favour of their husbands. Bleek calls English law 'despotic', cautioning that its potential for abuse by unscrupulous husbands or fortune hunters should not be understated. He defends the Roman-Dutch Law status quo, which offers greater security to all women in marriage contracts. The old Roman-Dutch Law is 'preferable' for protecting women's rights, as English Common Law retains cruel remnants of mediaeval law's outmoded thinking. However, the obsolete injunctions of the old Roman Law's Law of Inheritance need simplifying. The law should protect the vulnerable by safeguarding against a husband's 'power to inflict injury' through negligence or the malicious squandering of wives' and children's lawful assets while the administrator of such common property. Roman-Dutch Law, despite inconvenient intricacies, limits this otherwise unchecked power. The law must evolve, informed by the lived realities of those most directly affected.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

14 February 1865

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Law of Inheritance Commission, memorandum (by William Porter), marriage (colonial law of), women's rights, despotism (of English Common Law), Roman-Dutch Law (preferable in the Cape Colony), English law (divests married women of their property)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Tuesday, February 14th, 1865.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.