A Marriage for Money, a Dish of Hot Oysters

A. A. Rogerson, the defendant in the divorce suit of Olive Blanch Rogerson against A. A. Rogerson, has filed an answer and cross-complaint to the plaintiff's allegations. In this paper Mr. Rogerson denies about all the allegations in her complaint and makes serious charges against his wife.

He alleges that she is an unfit person to have charge of their minor child, Laura Rogerson, 2 years, by reason of her vile temper, violent example, and for the reason that she is addicted to the use of vile and obscene language. He says that since their marriage Mrs. Rogerson has been guilty of cruel and unnatural conduct toward him; that she has frequently vilified him and applied to him low, vile, and obscene epithets.

On May 22, 1894, Mrs. Rogerson, at Bremerton, Kitsap County, brutally assaulted him. He says she cried out: “Shut up and get out of this house; everything in here belongs to me.” She then caught up a dish of hot fried oysters and threw the contents in his face and over his person, then attempted to strike him with the dish. He held her, and she then, with great fury, assaulted him with a steel fork. A short time previous to this altercation, he says, she made threats against his life.

The couple had been divorced from each other in Hennepin County, Minn., in November. Mr. Rogerson came to Seattle and she followed him. Here she induced him to remarry her, which he did for the sake of their minor child. He says that she remarried him not for affection, but rather to secure possession of a certain note and mortgage, and that since the remarriage she has frequently declared that such was her intention.