MISSING BRIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 152, 26 December 1945, Page 3

MISSING BRIDE

COSTLY WEDDING FIASCO

REPUTED HEIRESS

OC. SYDNEY, December 14. After the greatest social upset any Australian city has known for many years, a reputed cotton heiress who was to have married a Government official has disappeared from her address.

The police have asked Scotland Yard for information about a recent remittance from London to a woman's account in Sydney. They are also investigating the record of a woman who is said to have used at least 20 aliases, and who served six months in prison for false pretences in Victoria some years ago.

A week ago it was announced that Mrs. Ethel Livesey, daughter of Mr. Frank Swindell, Manchester cotton magnate, would marry Mr. James Rex Beech, an officer of the Land Sales Control section of the Federal Treasury, at All Saints' Church, Woollahra, one of Sydney's fashionable churches. Mr. Beech, a native of Staffordshire, was a veteran of the first World War.

About 500 guests were invited to the wedding reception in the Blue Room at the Hotel Australia. Newspaper social writers said that features of the wedding would be a £50^ bouquet of rare orchids for the bride, a Molyneux bridal frock airmailed from Paris, the release of a flock of doves after the ceremony, and a 32-diamond ring to be carried on a cushion. Sir Frederick French, former commodore of an English shipping line, was to give the bride away. Mrs. Livesey altered the wedding plans 24 hours before the ceremony, on the ground that there had been too much publicity. Instead of a church wedding, it was to have been at the home of her physician, Dr. William Cunningham, of Darling Point. PHOTOGRAPHED IN WEDDING FROCK. Mrs. Livesey, who weighs about 20 stone, was photographed in her wedding frock, carrying the orchid bouquet, and with her bridesmaid and three matrons-of-honour, all well known in Sydney society. Guests had begun to arrive for the ceremony when Dr. Cunningham was suddenly called to Mrs. Livesey.

The bride's secretary then announced'that Mrs. Livesey was ill and could not go on with the wedding. Half an hour later the clergyman, the Rev. A. S. Cook, of Bellevue Hill, left. He said he had been told the bride had collapsed. Hundreds of people waited for more than two hours outside the Hotel Australia for a glimpse of the bride. Just before 7.30 p.m. a red carpet was laid down across the footpath, but it was taken up when the bride's secretary notified the hotel management that Mrs. Livesey was too ill for the wedding, but that the reception would go on, as arranged. About 250 people attended the reception. Despite a close guard at the door some' gate-crashers without invitation cards managed to get into the Blue Room. The guests included naval officers, some in uniform, others in mess jackets. • Many men wore evening tails —the greatest number seen at a Sydney function since before the war. Tall candles lit up tables laden with every kind of savoury and decorated with expensive flowers. After an announcement at 8.15 p.m. that the bride and bridegroom would be unable to attend, the guests were requested to continue with the reception. Some left, but others kept going for more than an hour. Neville Amadio, flautist, played the obbligato, while Jean Hatton, soprano, sang "Lo! Here the Gentle Lark." A band played softly and some parties made tentative attempts to dance. A four-tier wedding cake which towered to more than head height was admired, touched, and sniffed, but remained uncut. By 10 p.m. the last of the guests had drifted away.

SOLICITOR'S ADVICE. Mr G W. R. McDonald, solicitor, has since revealed that Mr. Beech had received certain information and authorised him to make inquiries. They went to Mrs. Livesey's flat at Edgecliff late in the afternoon fixed for the wedding. As a result of advice which he gave Mr Beech the marriage did not take place. Mr. McDonald said Mr. Beech had not known Mrs. Livesey for long and was not aware of certain matters. Mrs. Livesey's housekeeper said that about 7 a.m. on the morning after the cancelled ceremony Mrs. Livesey had left her flat in a taxi, taking her diamond ring but leaving the wedding presents. She did not know where Mrs. Livesey had gone, but believed she had left the flat for good. Two detectives had called some time after Mrs. Livesey had gone. The Sydney police have information suggesting that Mrs. Livesey received £40,000 by deed of gift. Business people who dealt with her are understood to have confirmed from her bank that her account was substantial. Interviewed in England, one of Mrs. Livesey's married sisters (who withheld her name) said she did not know how many times her sister had been married—four or five times or even more. She had had the names of Coradine, Anderton, and Livesey, and probably others. Roger Livesey, who played Colonel Blimp in the film, was a nephew. Late last year Mrs. Livesey rented a country house in Wales and a house on the Isle of Man, before she went to Australia. . These places were mentioned in tne social news in Sydney before the wedding date, when it was said that the couple would visit Mrs. Livesey s chateau at Monte Carlo on their honeymoon trip to England. Two seats booked in the name ot Mr and Mrs. Beech on a Sydney-Mel-bourne airliner for Sunday morning were cancelled. Mrs. Livesey came to Australia on a priority obtained through Australia House. She travelled on a Swedish vessel Messages from London state that Australia House officials who interviewed Mrs. Livesey say she .told them she had gone to Australia in 1919 with her husband. After his death she married again in New Zealand m 1930. She | returned to Britain in 1938, leaving two boys at Geelong Grammar School, the most exclusive public school in Aus\v fills. I Mrs Livesey told Australia House that one son was in the Navy and an- | other in the Royal Australian Air Force. She said her second husband died in England in 1943, and she wanted to return to Australia to see her boys. Her father, Frank Swindell, a man over 70, lives at Howstroke Hotel, near Douglas, on the Isle of Man. London messages say he is not a member of the big cotton family, one of the wealthiest in Lancashire.

VICTORIAN POLICE INTERESTED

A Melbourne message says the VieLivesey because they think she may torian police wish to interview Mrs. be able to assist them in inquiries about a woman known as Gloria Grey, also known as Florence Elizabeth Ethel Gardener, Elizabeth Anderson, and several other aliases. On July 16, 1928, Grey was released on a £50 good-behaviour bond in Melbourne on three charges of false pretences. In Adelaide in 1933 she was fined for failure to pay motor-car hire and in May, 1934, she appeared in Melbourne on 25 chai-ges of fraud. She pleaded guilty to ten charges and was sentenced to six months' gaol by a Judge who expressed astonishment at the credulity of tradespeople. Her counsel said she had been a nurse in the 1914-18 war and married an Army captain who died soon afterwards. She had two children by her second husband, who deserted her. She followed him from England to Australia and found he was a bigamist.

A Sydney man says he saw Mrs. Livesey, hatless and wearing a black frock, walking in George Street, Sydney. More credence is attached to a report that she passed through Goulburn, 137 miles from Sydney, in a car stacked with at least six suitcases, and it is believed she intended to embark on an airliner for Tasmania.