MOTHER AND SON MEET AFTER TWENTY YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 132, 5 June 1926, Page 23

MOTHER AND SON MEET AFTER TWENTY YEARS.

WOMAN S MTSTERIOUS PAST. A dramatic meeting between mother an.l son. after twenty years, and a surprise piece of evidence invalidating the mother's second "marriage." were features of an unusual case hennl a; Marylnboae Polk 1 *! Court. A fe*b!e and nearly blind woman of 73. sivinz her name as Lvdia Rusnto'n. an*l an address at Ilasborongh Street. F'addington. summoned Charles William Rnshton, dentist- of I'raed Street, Paddington. alleging that he had deserted her in June. 1925. She was married to Mr. Rnshton. she said, on April 5, IS9I. Mr. Rnshton told the court that she was not legally his wife. He said he had evidence that the first husband was living in New York. He was her third. To the evident a=tonishment of the oM woman, he then called her son by the first marriage to corroborate him. Herbert Edwin Davies, of Rainbow Hill. Worcester, asfeed if the old woman was his mother, looked at her intently, and then said that so far as he could recollect sno was. ■Ton see." he explained. ""I have not seen her for nearly twenty years, and she seems smaller." The last time he saw his mother was at the funeral of her father. nearly twenty years ago. and he last saw his father in 1011. when he returned to Worcester from America after an absence of nineteen years. Mr. Follies Jones, the woman's solicitor, said she told him she had not seen her first husband for 52 years, as she left him shortly after the birth of this son. In reply to the magistrate, she admitted that the witness was her son by her firs: bnsband. and the case was dismissed, tho magistrate suggesting that the son should do what he could to help his mother. "I am afraid I cannot." he replied. "I don't want to say anything in open court. but if I could you would be astonished." I =