“Look Before You Leap” . This was the title of a newspaper article reporting on Mary’s marriage in 1882.
Andrew Parris married Mary Jackson at St Mary of the Angels in Wellington in 1875. They were aged 26 and 15 respectively. Andrew was born in Greece and worked as a fisherman. Within two weeks of marriage, Mary applied for a protection order against her husband on the ground of repeated acts of cruelty. The judge advised her to take more pains to please her husband, and cautioned Andrew not to strike his wife again.
In 1876 Andrew was charged with using threatening language towards Mary. She claimed that he said to her in the street that he would cut her throat. Two witnesses provided an alibi for Andrew and the case was dismissed.
In May 1882 Mary again applied for a protection order and for custody of her child. She had been living away from Andrew for four months. The implication was that she wanted to leaver her husband because she was lonely living at Wellington Heads. The judge refused the application and recommended she be more obedient to her husband in future. The newspaper wrote “A case occurred in Wellington last week which shows that all women do not employ the necessary foresight before they bind themselves for good and all to fates of their husbands” and “The intellectual conversation of her piscatorial husband was no off-set for the loss of the pomps and vanities of this wicked, though pleasant world”.(Globe 4 May 1882).
In 1887 Andrew was living at Paremata with a woman called Eliza Cruse who died in childbirth. She had said that he always treated her kindly.
According to the 1901 divorce proceedings, Andrew left Mary in about 1881. Two witnesses said that Andrew had lived in adultery with May Amos. Mary remarried the same year as her divorce to Edmund Rich Brown. Edmund was a labourer living in Elizabeth Street. He died in 1906. Mary died in 1930 aged 70.
Mary Brown (nee Jackson) is buried in Ch Eng/X/128 with her husband Edmund
Andrew Parris is buried in Ch Eng 2/C/153
