WOMAN IN QUANDARY

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1929, Page 8

WOMAN IN QUANDARY

GRETNA GREEN "WEDDING.” LONDON, October 2. It is one thing to treat a mock marriage in Scotland as a joke, but quite another thing to discover that, by Scottish law, one is legally married. Such .a position is now facing Mrs Lydia Blanche Goulstone, formerly of Sydney, who was a well-known actress in Sydney Playbox Theatre. With another member of a party of tourists she went through the marriage ceremony at Gretna Green. Now she is wondering to what extent the prank may have to be taken seriously. Mrs Goulstone has just returned from a tour of Scotland, where she visited the famous Gretna Green smithy in which she was “married” to a member of her motoring party, who was a bachelor, living at Brighton, England. Mrs Goulstone, who is a widow, has the “marriage lines,” signed “Richard Rennison, priest,” setting out that Rennison married them. Two other members of the party, one of whom was an Anglican clergyman, signed the document as witnesses.

“We knew nothing about it until someone started the blacksmith on it as a joke, considering that we were the most eligible parties,” said Mrs Goulstone, in relating the story. “There was a ceremony in the blacksmith’s room, where 400 marriages were celebrated in 1929. Afterwards Rennison kissed me as the bride. It seemed, and seems still, a pure joke to me. We did not sign the register, but took it as a mock ceremony.

“Scottish friends, however, say that the Scots law regards two persons who have declared themselves married in the present of witnesses as married. I refuse to worry about it.”

“Prim, with a dash of mischief.” was how a member of the Playbox Theatre last week described Mrs Goulstone, who, she said, was a fair, small woman, who came originally from Perth. She spent her married life in Colombo. In Sydney she appeared at the Playbox Theatre in “Morn to Midnight” and “The Fanatics.”