A FREE PARDON.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 191, 12 August 1911, Page 5

A FREE PARDON.

(Received 10.20 a.m.) LONDON, August 11. Earl Russell, who in 1901 was found guilty of felony, and sentenced by the House of Lords to three months' imprisonment for bigamy, has been granted a free pardon.

In 1901 Earl Russell was tried by the House of Lords for bigamy, this being the only trial within livmg memory of a peer being tried for bigamy. Such trials must be by the House of Lords sitting as a criminal court under the presidency of the Lord High Steward Lord Russell, was maTried in 1890 to Miss Mabel Scott, daughter of Sir Claude Scott, and in 1900 he obtained an "American divorce and married again, pleaded guilty to the charge of bigamy, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment. There was no precedent for any trial by the House of Lords;, except on a capital charge, and the sentence was determined by the Lords in private. The points of law involved were that the offence of bigamy can be committed by a second marriage ■beyond the King's Dominions. Nice questions might have arisen as to the validity of foreign divorces, but it was admitted that the divorce was not valid, even in the United 6tates. Earl Russell's first wife died in 1908. Earl Russell's father was the sixth son of the Duke of Bedford, and was Lord John Russell, one of the foremost statesmen of the 19th century. MOROCCO'S SULTAN ILL FEZ, August 11. Mulai Hafid, the Sultan of Morocco, is suffering from typhoid fever, his condition being serious.