ACCOMMODATION MARRIAGE

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIX, Issue 86, 28 October 1938, Page 5

ACCOMMODATION MARRIAGE

STOLEN PASSPORT USED

ROMANTIC END TO TANGLE

(From The Guardian's London

Correspondent)

LONDON, Sept, 24,

When Harold John Pegler, the British manager of a group of shops in Paris, applied for renewal of his identity card recently, he was reprimanded by the police for failing to notify his marriage. Declaring that he was still single, Pegler was shown proof of his marriage in the official

records

As he still persisted that he knew nothing of the matter he was confronted with his "wife," who admitted, however, that this was not the man she had married, though the name was the same. It was discovered that her real husband, a member of a "marriage gang," had used a passport which Mr Pegler had lost some time ago.

This strange tangle has been caused by the activities of the "brokers" now reaping a rich harvest by providing "accommodation husbands" Tor European refugees.

When she fled from Vienna, Fraulein Lea Jacobs intended to set up home and open a business in England but the British authorities refused her a permit. Later she met one of the agents "touting" for the "accommodation marriage brokers,", and she agreed to marry a man who was described as Harold John Pegler. The "husband," who, of course, was not Pegler, was supposed to divorce Fraulein Jacobs after escorting her to England, but, instead of carrying out the agreement, he vanished after the ceremony, taking all his "bride's" ready cash with him.

The introduction between the real Pegler and his supposed bride, thus strangely made, was followed by further meetings between the two, who found they had so much in common that this strange "marriage" seemed to have been arranged by fate. They have been advised that a declaration of nullity can only be obtained after costly legal procedure. In the absence of a nullity decree the marriage is legal. To set all doubt at rest the couple have decided to go through a religious ceremony before taking up life together.