Newsflash from the Past: GOT CASTOR OIL COCKTAIL
Attorney Says Husky Wife Made Him Take One
LOS ANGELES, April 6, 1918. – A “castor oil” cocktail is the newest thing in divorce suits. E.T. Barber, an attorney, was granted a divorce by Judge Finlayson from Kate W. Barber, after declaring that his wife, Kate W. Barber, administered the “cocktail” while he was lying on the couch.
He was ill, he stated, and pulling his head back, Mrs. Barber forced castor oil and gin mixed down his throat. He struggled, but she was too quick for him, he stated. Besides, he told the court, his wife is a strong woman, weighing 175 pound, and was the boss.
“She insisted upon managing and controlling me,” he declared. “For four months she did not let me go to the office.”
Upon the very wedding day, trouble started, it developed.
“She told me I had immoral ideas on marriage,” he testified, “and she said she would not be married to a man with those ideas. If I did not agree with her, she told me. That was the ‘vampire’ act, she said, and it was the only way men were ruined by women.”
A witness stated that Mrs. Barber was overheard to say, regarding her husband: “I’ll make him eat out of my hand.”
Another witness testified: “I saw her seize him by the coat and shake him as a dog shakes a rat and bump his head against the furniture.”
Source: The Des Moines Register
