AN ADVENTURER BOWLED OUT.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 157, 31 December 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN ADVENTURER BOWLED OUT.

A social sensation that has deeply inter^ ested the entire west had its beginning in San Francisco early in October (writes the San Francisco correspondent of the Melbourne Age), when there was published by the daily press the fact that Charles A. Williams, a smart young man about town, and the prospective husband of Miss Genevieve Goad, a society heiress, was an adventurer with a discreditable record. It was shown that his real name was W|iite, that he had married at Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1891, a wealthy widow named Nagle ; that she had divorced him a year later for excessive cruelty ; that she had procured his arrest for embezzling large sums of money from her ; and. that he had all along deceived his new found associates as to his y antecedents. It came out thafc Williams had beaten and bitten his Wyoming wife, that he had absorbed a large part of her fortune, and had run away, finally with her young son. At the time of these untoward happenings Williams was, or pretended to be, the American representative of the London Illustrated News, and when he was arrested at New York city he was occupying handsome offices as the agent of "that newspaper, His plea was that Mrs. Nagle had given, him 100,000dol in consideration of his' marrying her. The woman's assertion was. that he had, by threats and force compelled her to give him large sums in cash and securities. Naturally, these disclosures produced an immense sensation. Williams had the entree of the best circles of society on the coast, his sponsor beingE. A. Wiltsee, a young Californian, whq made his fortune at Johannesburg, South Africa. Within a few hours Williams was to have become the husband of the rich and fashionable Miss Goad, and as such would have had an assured position in society. It needed little investigation to show that, the published charges were more than borne out by the facts. The engagement? was broken off, and Williams left San Francisco as quietly as possible.