.GRETNA WEDDING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 11

.GRETNA WEDDING.

RICH GIRL ELOPES.

MYSTERY 'PHONE CALL

FLYING-OFFICER BRIDEGROOM

LONDON, July 22

Miss Margaret Patricia Porritt, 20-year-old daughter of a Manchester cotton merchant, eloped from her father's Scottish castle at Stranraer, Wigtownshire.

Over the anvil at Gretna Green she married Flying-officer Hector Yeats Lawrence, who used to drop boxes of chocolates from his aeroplane to her on the castle lawn.

A few hours before, David Macintosh, of Gretna Hall smithy, received a mysterious telephone call from an unknown woman, who asked if he had married a man named Lawrence.

He told her that no one named Lawrence had visited the smithy. She rang off, giving no explanation.

"Mr. Lawrence made no comment when told of the 'phone call." said Mr. Macintosh.

Flying-officer Lawrence's father said: "The couple were engaged to mv knowledge for eight months. They have got married and good luck to them. That is all I am prepared to say. They can tell you the rest themselves."