VIOLINIST’S CLAIM

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 79, 16 March 1935, Page 5

VIOLINIST’S CLAIM

Once Famous Bessie Doyle FIRST HUSBAND’S ESTATE Story of a Second Marriage (Bj' Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received Id, 9.20 a.m.) SYDNEY, March 10. The Equity Court is hearing a claim by a one-time famous violinist who toured Europe, America and New Zealand, Lydia Elizabeth Northey, aged 61 years, otherwise Bessie Doyle, for a share in the estate of her late husband, who died in 1933 leaving £23,000, of which £lOOO was bequeathed to a sister in England and the remainder to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution of Great Britain. Mrs. Northey, who says she is now practically destitute, married Northey at the registrar’s office at Auckland in 1894. He deserted her after a concert tour of the Dominion, which he man aged, and later invited her to divorce him. She obtained a divorce at North Dakota, United States, and remarried Robert Mitchell in 1899. Northey met her in Paris some time later and informed her that the marriage with Mitchell was bigamous. He asked her to leave Mitchell, which she did, since when she always had regarded Northey as her legitimate husband, although in recent years she maintained herself by concert work and teaching music. The hearing of the case was adjourned. The husband's name was Louis Reginald Northey. Applicant, when famous as a violin player, was first known as Bessie Doyle and later as Eileen O Moore.