BIGAMIST SENT TO PRISON

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26944, 21 January 1953, Page 10

BIGAMIST SENT TO PRISON

SECOND OFFENDER (New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, January 20. Described by Mr J. D. Willis, S.M., as an unprincipled scoundrel, Melville Royce Sherwood, aged 34, a chef, was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment with hard labtfur when he appeared for sentence on a charge of bigamy m the Magistrate’s Court at Dunedin today. When the case w=s heard before Mr Willis last Thursday, Chief Detective T. Y. Hall said that Sherwood had gone through a form of marriage on three occasions. Two of these marriages

were bigamous. , , Mr W. H. Carson appeared for Sherwood. who pleaded guilty. The Magistr .te said that the offence with which the prisoner was now charged had been committed on April 4 1949, at Dunedin. Previously Sherwood had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in the Supreme Court at Wellington on a charge of bigamy, and to six months’ imprisonment on a charge of making a false declaration, which arose out of the

other offence. “This should have been a warning to you, but within a few years, you committed bigamy again,” said the Magistrate. “You have done an irreparable injury to the woman concerned and also to the three CTuldren Mr Carson said Sherwood had first been married when he was 22, but he did not have the guidance that might have kept him on the proper path. Counsel agreed that the offence was a reckless act. The prisoner had saved the country a good deal of expense by pleading guilty. He had maintained the children of the bigamous marriage.