ELOPEMENT PLAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 July 1927, Page 2

ELOPEMENT PLAN

GIRL MARRIED AT FOURTEEN. A story of a girl of 14, whose wedding to a youth of 20 took place during the school dinner hour, was told at Hull. Francis Joheph Theodore Nowell, of Coxhill, Lincolnshire, was then fined £2O and costs, for making a false declaration to procure marriage. It was stated that Nowell had livedwith William Hoodies, a farmer, and his wife, at Barton-on-Humber, while working at a brickyard. A friendship sprung up between him and Edith Margaret Hoodless, a 14-year-old daughter, and in February Nowell visited the offices of the Registrar of Marriages at Hull, and arranged for marriage. The girl, he said, was 16 years of age, and he was informed the consent of her parents would be required. A few days later the marirage took place after the girl left school at the dinner hour. One person present at the ceremony was introduced to the registrar as the father, and he signed the form as such. A statement was also submitted purporting to have been sent by the girl’s mother. After the ceremony the young couple returned to the girl’s home and announced they had been married. The girl’s parents were shocked. Nowell, it was said, was extremely well connected. Under a will he would inherit several thousands of pounds when he came of age next year. A deep affection had sprung up between Nowell and the girl, and one of her letters, it was stated, actually set out a plan for their elopement and marriage.

A woman of 65 made the pathetic announcement in the Police Court at Blackburn recently that her courtship with a swain of 72 was now finished. She had summoned him for assaulting her and stated that while courting one day they had a lovers’ tiff. During the quarrel, her sweetheart had knocked her down. Asked to explain this in Court, the swain said that he was roused to this act when the lady snatched from him a watch she had bought him, and in the scuffle she tripped over the carpet. “So there’s no more courting,” observed the magistrate’s clerk, with a sympathetic sigh.