VERY BADLY TREATED

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 9

VERY BADLY TREATED

Judge's Comment in Suit of Once Famous Violinist. JUDGMENT FOU BESSIE DOYLE. (Received 11 a.m.) SYDNEY, this day. The Equity Court has concluded the hearing of the claim by the once famous violinist who totired Europe, America and New Zealand, Mrs. Lydia Elizabeth Northey, aged 01, otherwise Bessie Doyle, for a share of the estate of her late husband, Louis Reginald Northey, who died ii* 1933 leaving £23,000, of which £1000 was bequeathed to his sister in England and the to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution of Great Britain.

Mr. Justice Long-Innes said that a prima facie case had been made out that the testator had domicile, either British by origin or New Zealand by choice, when he married the applicant at Auckland in 1894. As it had riot been made out that testator had domicile where the North Dakota divorce decree was recognised as valid, the applicant was entitled to benefit under the Act.

The judge expressed the opinion that applicant had been very badly treated and adjourned the case to enable counsel to be heard as to quantum and form of the order he should make.

Mrs. Northey. who says she is now practically destitute, married Northey at the Registrar's Office, Auckland, in 1891, and he deserted her after a concert tour the Dominion, which he managed. He later invited her to divorce him. , Si«e obtained a divorce at North Dakota, United States, and married Robert Mitchell in 1800. Northey met Jier in Paris soiiie time later, and informed icr that tlie marriage with Mitchell ".vas bigamous. He asked her to leave Mitchell. which nhe did. since when she lias always regarded Northey as her legitimate husband. Of recent years she has herself by concert work and teaching music. She was later known as Eileen O'Moore.