ENOCH ARDEN

Evening Star, Issue 18034, 31 July 1922, Page 8

ENOCH ARDEN

A GAXADIAX CASE. The story of Enoch Arden—with an important variation—as re-enacted in the lives of a Vancouver trio, came to light in tho Supreme Court, when Justice Murphy declared tho marriage of George Edward Munro to bo a nullity. “Mrs Monro,” who has been living with her returned-from-tho-grave first husband, Paul H Decker, for some months past, is now declared to Lave been Mrs Decker all along. The evidence told of a long absence by the real husband in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia-. The woman in the case was Edith Hammond, daughter of Dave Hammond, formerly a wealthy hotel proprietor in British Columbia, As Edith Hammond sho married Decker in May, 1907, and just ton years later, believing herself to bo a widow, she married Munro in Vancouver under tho name of Edith Decker.

"There is no culpability in this case. It is the experience of a wife who honestly believed her husband to bo dead and who married again only to find a couple of years later that ho was alive,’’ stated William Ravage, counsel for Munro, in outlining the case to the court. TWO HUSBANDS, i Munro said: " I got the surprise- of my life when I came home on March 10 last and my wife told me that her husband had arrived. We had both thought him dead for years. My wife had received a letter from a friend in Kansas City in 1909 telling of his death.” Decker, a well-groomed and alert man, ' came to court and cleared up any room for doubt- by telling his own story of how he had lost his wife and children and found them again. “ I met Edith in Toronto in 1905, and fell in love with her,” he said. "Two years later we were married. I was in the electrical business. She became very jealous, and her father, I who had disapproved of her marriage to me, frequently wrote asking her to come home on a visit. He sent for her at last, and she went- with the children to Armj strong, B.C. For months wo wrote. _ I wanted her to come hack to Kansas City, where I had a good position. RENO DIVORCE THREATENED. I " She wished me to go to British Columbia., where her father wanted me to run an hotel for him. I wrote that I would have nothing to do with the hotel business and did not want to go to British Columbia to .live. She replied that unless I would come to her she would nut oume back to me. While we were at loggerheads a friend told me lie had beard that she was arranging to go to Reno to get a divorce, and at the time it scorned as if it was a likely thing for her to do. i “ Thinking she' was going to seek a ! divorce, I went to New Orleans. From there I took a jab on a ship going to Capa Town. I went to Melbourne and Sydney for a year, then -followed the «afor a time, and later on returned to Now Orleans to live. I never married again. "A couple of years ago I read in a Now Orleans paper an item to the effect that Da-vc Hammond, an old pioneer of British Columbia, had died. It made mo think of Edith and of our children, and I made up by mind that I would take the next chance to find them, and findout if she was still living and if she had married again. “ Ten months ago I got a chance to come north, but could only stay two daye hera in Vancouver. I seemed to have run into a blank wall. I could not get a trace of her. Then I came back again in March , to take up the search. ! , TRACED THROUGH CHILDREN. j I “There wr.s no 'Decker’ in the direc-I tory, but a friend suggested that I might : j get a line on the children through the schools. At Dawson School I came across the name of Margery Decker, who later I turned out to be my child. Prom grocery I stores in the neighborhood I found out, where they lived. I went to the dbor, I and my wife fell down in a heap when she | saw me. She told me she thought I had j | been dead for years.

In hie evidence the petitioner, Monro, admitted that he and Mrs Decker had not been entirely happy, and had separated on three occasions owing to incompatibility. A decree of nullity was ordered.