BIGAMY CHARGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 November 1943, Page 6

BIGAMY CHARGE

GIRL MARRIED AT 15. AUCKLAND, November 18. During the hearing of the most unusual bigamy charge, in the Police Court this morning, the accused woman, aged 23,. who. went through, the form of marriage with a soldier, after he returned to Auckland on. furlough, declared that when only 15 years of age, she was persuaded by her mother to marry an elderly man, the father of her two children. The Magistrate (Mr. Morling) made an order against the publication of names. Meantime, the woman who admitted bigamy was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence. While the soldier sat in the Court nursing the woman’s four-year-old son, accused seated in a chair in front of the dock, sobbed throughout the hearing. The “first witness was a man, aged 52, accused’s husband, having married her in. August, 1935. Two boys aged two and four were children of the marriage. Owing to a difference, witness said his wife left him a year ago. Witness denied he knew accused was 15 when her mother put her age at 17 at the time of the marriage. The soldier said he met accused at a dance. She introduced herself as a single woman working in a factory. A month later he proposed marriage and she agreed. In the license she described herself as a spinster. A week after the marriage he learnt she was married, but when he spoke to her about it, she denied it. She was still living with him. He intended to marry her legally. A detective, in evidence, said he obtained from accused a statement that she was boarding at a convent till 14, then she and her ibother lived in a one-roomed home shed. She had differences with her husband, who she considered was too old, and she finally left because he told her to get out.