ABSTRACT
War conditions tested the constancy of many a hasty marriage exposed to the cold reflection of prolonged separation. These marital casualties of the Second World War resulted in an annual average of some 43,000 divorce petitions during the three years 1946-8, husbands filing 59 per cent of the petitions. Such large numbers caused lengthy delays in a system designed to deal with an average of five to seven thousand petitions a year. A wartime Committee had already rejected the suggestion that County courts should be allowed to handle divorces; instead, recommending Assizes should hear defended as well as undefended petitions, for such matters should be heard ‘in the highest court available’. The pressure on the over-burdened London Divorce Court and Assize judges was partly eased in 1946 by appointing Special Commissioners with the authority of High Court judges to sit in London and provincial towns to hear divorce petitions.
