PROPOSAL FROM DOCK.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 165, 14 July 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

PROPOSAL FROM DOCK.

BIGAMIST'S ALLEGED FOUR

"WIVES."

GIRL HESITATES

A marriage proposal was made from the dock at the Old Bailey, when Bertram Ley Roberts (46), clerk, stated to have had four "wives," was sent to prison for twelve months in the second division for bigamy. Mr. B. H. Waddy, prosecuting, said Roberts was first married in Cardiff in 1905, and there were three children of the marriage. In 1910 he went to Canada, and two years later appeared to have gone through a form of marriage with a woman in Victoria, British Columbia. He served in the war, becoming a staff sergeant-major with tl|s RA.S.C. in Egypt. In 1918, while jn Cairo, he "married" again, and his wife in British Columbia took divorce proceedings against him. Returning to this country he courted Miss Mary Allchin, a business girl, as a single man, and they were "married" in Kent in 1925. After two years of happy "married" life Miss Allchin discovered a letter written by the Cairo "wife." She consulted a solicitor, and bigamy proceed ings followed.

Mrs. Roberts, the legal wife, said that she had not heard from her husband for seventeen years after he had left her, and she would like to divorce him.

The Recorder (Sir Ernest Wild, K.C.) advised her to go to the Poor Persons Department at the High Court. from the dock, said that he was willing to marry Miss Allchin if she would marry him.

The Recorder: I will ask her. Calling her forward, he said: ''Would you like to marry him if you could?" Miss Allchin: I would rather think it over.

The Recorder, passing sentence, said that as the marriages in British Columbia and Cairo had not been strictly proved, he should not pay attention to them.