DASH TO GRETNA

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1933, Page 11

DASH TO GRETNA

PRETENSIONS TO WEALTH LONDON, July 2. Alleged to have posed as a naval officer and a man of wealth and to have attempted a Gretna Green marriage with a girl of much higher social standing than himself, William Bispham, aged 22, a clerk of Stamford Brook Mansions, Chiswick, was sen. fenced yesterday at West London to twelve months hard labour. He was charged with attempting to commit suicide in a cell at Kensington Police Station by strangling him self with a shoe lace, with stealing three cheque forms from Mrs. Violei Rose, of Oster Mews, Kensington, and with obtaining by false pretences a motor-car belonging to Mrs. Maud Grigor, of Oster Mews. The magistrate (Mr. Powell) described him as “a dangerous adventurer.” Evidence was given last week that after being arrested at Ghorley, Lancs. Bispham was found in his cell unconscious with a shoe lace tied so tightly round his neck that it had to be cut.

Mrs. Rose said that Bispham and a girl whom she knew slightly came to her flat. In conversation Bispham said he was a Lieutenant-Commander in the Navy, and that he had £4,000 a year apart from his pay, and that he and the girl were going to Scotland the next day to be married. Mrs. Rose gave her consent to theii staying at the flat for the night. Next day she learned that Bispham had hired a car from Mrs. Grigor representing that he was a friend of hers (Mrs Rose). She afterwards missed the cheques from her cheque book. Mrs. Grigor gave evidence that she hired the car to Bispham on his statement that he was a naval doctor attached to a hospital at Chatham. SHOT IN CELL Detective-Sergeant Welsby said that about six weeks ago Bispham made the acquaintance of a young woman of much higher social standing than himself. He told her he was a man of money, and a surgeon-commander in the Royal Navy. She became so infatuated with him that she threw in her lot with him. He proposed that they should go to Gretna Green and be married. Bispham procured the car from Mrs. Grigor, and he and the young woman travelled in it to Gretna Green, where they filled up a marriage application form. Afterwards they toured in Scot land, and the woman introduced Bispham to a. friend of hers. The friend soon discovered, however, that Bispham was a fraud, and turned him ami the woman out of her house. When. Bispham was arrested at Chorley he was placed in a cell, and on the following morning it was found that he had secreted a cartridge in his sock. With the aid of the bent prong of a fork, Bispham pushed the cartridge against his heart and then hit the fork with his shoo. Apparently, the shot hit everything in the cell except Bispham, who, however, was in such a state of collapse that he was taken to hospital. Mr. Powell, addressing Bispham, said, “You practically seduced this girl by pretending that you were someone of position in the Navy, and you have shown the basest ingratitude to Sergeant Welsby and the other officer, who, not for the first time, did their best to get a young man to go straight.”