SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE.

Auckland Star, Issue 123, 24 May 1919, Page 19

SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE.

M-A.lt HI ED BKOTIIER'S WIDOW. "Many people,'' said V.r. Trnvers Humphreys, at the Olil Bailey, "are under the Impression Uiat the Deceased Wife's | Sister Act, which allows a man to marry bis deceased wife's sister, can he reversed, and that a woman can marry her deceased husband's brother. But it is not so." Counsel was prosecuting in the case of •Percy Porker Shepherd, IT,, a private In the R.A.M.C., i\vlio was charged -with makAct, mid inciting Cicely Mnria Shepherd to murder her child when It should be born. Cicely Shepherd was the widow of the prisoner's brother, who had been Uilled in the Avar. The false declaration, continued counsel, was made at the reslstrnr's ofßoe, when the prisoner said he was her second cousin. He afterwards obtained a divorce on the srround that be and the sirl came witliln the "degree of affinity." The divorce judse impounded the papers, ana sent them to the Public Prosecutor. i After the prisoner had been found guilty on all counts, Mr. Justice Darling said th.it the way Shepherd had treated his brother's widow was infamous. "A meaner, baser creature than you," he added, "I have never seen; never. You ■will go to penal servitude for five years."