BACK TO THE OLD LOVE

Evening Star, Issue 17954, 27 April 1922, Page 2

BACK TO THE OLD LOVE

HIS. FIRST AND SECOND WIVES. A case rare in divorce jurisdiction, and having some remarkable and, for the second wife, pathetic features, occupied the attention of Mr Justice Sohutt in the First Civil Court, Melbourne, on April 6. Mortimer Gordon Griffiths, of St. Kildk, leather goods salesman, applied for a decree of nullity, on tho legal fact that his first wife was alive when ho married the second. Griffiths stated in the box that he intended to “ do his duty by his first wife, and live with her in Victoria.” -Tho second wife, Gladys Jean Warren, a fair, handsome woman, who has a daughter of seven years by the/'petitioner, appeared in court, and l formally denied the first marriage, in order, ns her counsel explained, "to make Griffiths prove his case up to the hilt.” Griffiths explained that ho was only twenty when at. Holt’s Matrimonial Agency in Melbourne on August 23, 1905, ho married Frances Maud Griffiths (nee Tuckerman), twenty-one, unknown to their respective relatives. The marriage “ took place over a bet.” For six weeks they did not cohabit, then j tho marriage becoming known, they lived together as man and wife. They wont to Launceston, he taking up a position as 'manager of a boot shop, and his wife starting a little millinery business of her own. Trade became slack, and Griffiths lost his employment. His wife refused to return to Melbourne with him, in the absence of security of employment, ami continued' in her business in Launceston. They wrote a .letter "or two to each other, and then the correspondence dropped, Mrs' Griffiths not responding. Mrs Griffiths subsequently left Launceston, and Griffiths lost sight of her, and thought her dead. Ho took up a position in Quorn, South Australia, whore iu 1913 he met and married Gladys Warren. They were never happy together, and in 1921 ho had to take proceedings against her for assault in his shop. About three years ago ho learned that his first wife was still alive, ami in Now South Wales. Ho wrote to her, and she replied, and! sent a photograph, and they had 1 been corresponding since.

Mr Justice Schutt: What made you bo He-vo that your first wife was dead?

Griffiths: I advertised for lier twice, and wrote everywhere for news of her. I really believed she was dead.

His Honor granted a decree of nullity, and made an order that the decree nisi should not. become absolute for three mouths. His Honor said l that the withholding of the decree absolute would give tho Attorney-General time to move if ho thought the court had been misled. It was regrettable that a child should have been born of this invalid union. Respondent' was granted £2O costs.