COMMITTED BIGAMY

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 May 1927, Page 4

COMMITTED BIGAMY

TO GIVE CHILD NAME

PARIS, March 8

A Breton woman found her way to Hie heart of a Paris jury yesterday when she was tried for bigamy and using forged documents. Marie Moreau,, who wore the picturesque Breton costume with short skirts, velvet bodice, and lace cap, was married in 1916 to a sailor named Pierre Nicholas, who sailed to the. Southern Seas, never to return to her. Eight years elapsed and she mot a restaurant proprietor named Charles Robin.

“I married Charles,” she told the jury, “because 1 was about, to become a mother, and I wanted to give a name to my child. I did not tell him 1 had been married eight years before. It seemed so long ago that I thought it did not matter.”

She explained how she had secured her birth certificate and had deleted from it the mention of her previous marriage.

Bigamy is a very rare crime in France, and the Public Prosecutor, though he asked for a verdict of guilty to maintain the principle of the law, said he thought the woman, who had acted more out of ignorance and mother-love than anything else should be given the benefit of First. Offen decs Act.

This was also the opinion of the presiding Judge, but the jury, amid great applause, acquitted her altogether.