GRETNA GREEN

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 121, 25 May 1931, Page 9

GRETNA GREEN

A JUDGE'S ATTITUDE

WOMAN'S PETITION

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, Ist April. A petition to have a Gretna Green marriage declared void came before Lord Pitman in the Edinburgh Court .of Session last week. Lord Pitman, in adjourning the case, said it strengthened his view that steps should be taken to make it illegal for selfappointed "priests" to perform ceremonies. The petitioner is Kathleen Williams Bockfort, of Helensburgh, and tho respondent Alfred Theodore Koch, alias Neilson, a commercial traveller, some time of Glasgow, whose present address is unknown to the petitioner. Petitioner's stpry was that she and the respondent were, in love and, in spite of the opposition of her' parents, became engaged. They entered into a. scheme to bring pressure to bear on her parents and move them, to consent. On 3rd April, 1929, they motored to Gretna, and wont through a ceremony of marriage, neither of them intending that it should be a real marriage. The coremony was performed by a shoemaker, the parties joining hands across an anvil, and being asked to tako one another for man and wife. Then followed tho Benodiction, and a certificate was handed to them professing to certify that they Itad beon married in the manner of tho law of Scotland. It was signed by the parties, by two witnesses, -and by the shoemaker, who was designed "priest." The parties were advised that tho marriage had to be registered within three months. Tho respondent placed a ring on petitioner's third finger of the left hand. She said she regardoC the ling as a symbol of her intention to carry out, at a future date, her promise to marry tho respondent. She did not regard it as a symbol of present marriage. After the ceremony tho two returned to their respective homes and never lived together. Petitioner's case was that neilher she nor the respondent intended to give, nor did give, consent to the marriage. They both regarded the ceremony as a means of making their engagement or promise of inarriago more definite with the view of persuading the petitioner's parents to agree In the absence of the respondent his Lordship said that ho was unable to hold that the petitioner had proved, that she and he did not intend to become husband and wife. Mental reservation on tlie part of two contracting parties could never be allowed to modify the contract. His Lordship I added that the caso strengthened him in the view that steps should bo taken, to have it made- illegal for these selfappointed "priests" to perform the ceremony, or, at all events, to call them to account for taking payment on their issuing what professed to bo a certificate " marriage which was nothing of the 1, .1. In a previous case the parties were charged a guinea for a worthless pieoo of paper, and in the present case 30s was paid to the witnesses, but how it. was divided did not appear, the "priest" having stated that he made no charge, but left it to the parties to pay what thoy liked.