[Indexed as: Sentner, David P., “Alimony Club Members To Demand Trial By Jury – Organization Holds First Official Dinner – Victim Who Served 33 Months in Jail Cheered As A Martyr.” syndicated (INS), Indiana Evening Gazette (Pa.), Mar. 12, 1934]

(INS). – A man should not go to ail for failure to pay alimony without a trial by jury.

This was the new battle today of the Alimony Club following the organization’s first official dinner at which oratory and pent up emotions had their fling.

Several hundred members, most of them former prisoners in jail for alimony trouble, gathered with second wives and, sweethearts to improve the situation at the George Washington hotel.

“That there should be such an organization as the Alimony Club has been regarded by some people as humorous, whereas it is in reality an association created by a definite social necessity to carry out a definite social need,” said President Merritt Crawford.

“The club has been formed solely to help ourselves and our brother unfortunates who have become victims of the archaic and un-American alimony laws of this state and to seek to have these laws modified and amended so that present gross abuses and injustices may be terminated and the laws applied with equal justice to husband and wife.”

The “Star Spangled Banner” was played.

Umberto Poliatano, who served 33 months in an alimony jail, was cheered as a martyr.

Mrs. Rose Fox, who sympathized heartily with the movement although happily married, was honored as “the first lady to apply for membership.”

“I want to thank you all for permitting me to join a cause so liberal that it seeks to place womanhood on an equal plane with men,” acknowledged Mrs. Fox, a blonde in a white hat.

The alimony prisoners in the New York county jail telegraphed:

“We here are gathered in prayer. We pray that through your efforts we shall be delivered from bondage and that equitable legislation shall be passed for freedom from the iniquities of the vicious alimony system.

The boys in the Brooklyn civil jail wired:

“Sorry we cannot be there with you in the flesh. We are hoping for a new lease on life.”

The chairman said that the sheriff was unable to attend f the dinner on account of a previous engagement. He said it was just as well as it might have been “embarrassing” if he had accepted the invitation.

Russ Brown, who has served two alimony jail hitches, spoke on “vicious wives.”

Arthur Garfield Hays, prominent attorney, who confessed to alimony trouble, declared for rationalization of the alimony laws and guaranteeing a trial by jury to a defendant before he was committed to jail for lack of alimony payments.