A QUESTION FOR SOLOMON.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1354, 29 September 1886, Page 3

A QUESTION FOR SOLOMON.

A very singular disputed will case lisa been before the Supreme Co art in Mel* bourne. Fiction, after all, is not more extraordinary than fast. The circumstance* shew a wonderfully lax observation of the maniage la’ts. Sut on married his first wife in 1853. She had originally been the Jwife c f Jamas Stone., of Tasmania. Stone after living fifteen years with her, eloped with another woman and went to England. She thereupon married one Chapman who died, and afterwards became Mrs Su*ton. Bat it is asserted that Stone was still alive at the time cf these marriages, wh'ch were thns illegal. Mrs Stone lived with Sntton two years, when she left him. This was in 1860 In 1862 Sntton married Mary Delaney, Mrs Stone being still alive. Mary Delaney lived with Sutton nine years and then she left him and want off to California with anothe man, and it is believed she is still alive there. Sntton was deserted by Mary Delaney ia 18'7, and after seven years he married again; this fine Lena Wark was the chosen one. Mrs Stone, his first wife was hy this time dead, but Maty Delaney, bis third wife, was alive in Califotna, Sutton himsslf died six months after his marriage to Lena Wark, who, it may be added, has married again. Who was Sutton’s wife ? was the question the C-urt was asked to unravel in the Interests of a nephew, who, if Lena Wark was not a legal wife, gets the benefit of the will He has bad three months granted to him to procure further evidence, and has a very extraordinary task before him, one would say. The story Is an amazing instance of the vicissitudes of colonial life*