THREE YEARS' GAOL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 148, 20 December 1930, Page 15

THREE YEARS' GAOL

SENTENCE FOR BIGAMY

MAN T\ rfIO DESERTED NAVY (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, 19th December. A bigamist who married a young A Toman in Devonport last June when ho had a wife in England was sent to gaol for three years by Mr. Justice Smith in the Supreme Court. The prisoner was George Lionel Allen, .25 years of age, a steward, for jvhom Mr. Schramm appeared. Immediately after the offence prisoner deserted frbin the Now Zealand Division of tho Navy, said Mi-. Schramm, in order to 'cover up his offence. He had1, been in the Navy for seven years, and had come out to New Zealand on one of the .warships from j England, For his desertion he had j been sentenced to 90 days' imprison-] Eient. ' The fact that he had married in New Zealand became known to the naval authorities when his second wife made claims on his pay. In the period he had lived with his second wife he treated her well, and counsel asked the Court to make the sentence as light as possible. His Honour described it as a delibe- | rate offence of bigamy. Apparently the wife in England wrote several times a week, and there was no reason whatever for prisoner to believe that she was dead. Notwithstanding that, he deliberately married a woman in Devonport and did her ?i cruel wrong, as he must realise. In passing sentence of three years' hard labour, his Honour said tho circumstances were such that th'e sentence must be a deterrent.