SOME QUEER MARRIAGES.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 3, Issue 147, 25 September 1895, Page 4

SOME QUEER MARRIAGES.

Bi" A WHO HAS T»KKV PAItT IN THEIR PEEFOBMANeE.

During a long experience 1 have met with some curious candidates fur matrimony, and 1 have known the bauns to he forbidden repeatedly. On two of these latter occasions the ground alleged bas been that the bridegroom was insane, and, sure enough, in one case the man murdered bis mother in a terrible access of madness on tbe very day on which be should have been married. .Not many years ago 1 remarried over 20 couples who had previously had the knot tied for them, as they imagined, by an officiating minister who afterwards was proved to be a swindler, and do clergyman at all. One marriage I was about to perform was actually stopped at the altar a woman claimi: g tbe bridegroom, who was about to marrv a rich girl, as her husband. The youug man violently protested his iunccence, and it was afterwards found with tolerable certainty that the whole thing yas a device to mir the proceedings on trie part of a man who is actually a member of the House of Commons to-day. it effectually stopped the marriage, by the way, for the bride showed such temper and resentment, despite the almost hear!-breakingprotestations ol the bridegro >ir, that 1 rather think the latt;r was afterwards «lnd the ceremony had been forbidden. AN EXPEXSIVE UNION. By one marriage I was out if pocket by a large sum indeed. The banns must by law be declared on three separate Sundays, but by some error of the clerk in not, in a lorg list, ineluding the names of one couple 1 omitted to publish the bauns on the second Sunday, to sail lor America at once, their passagi s being already beoked, The dreadful thought occurred to mo lifter the second Sunday that J. had ointnitted the bannts on that day 3 and I uctually took the opinion of tv.v eminent lawyers as to whether I could legally perform tbe ceremony. The annwer was "No." Not only were the couple detained at my expense, so that the banns might be duly published, but I paid over forty pounds in lawyers fees for this cue omission. On two operate occasions when the bridegroom has not turned up I have c n a subsequent day not long after married the disappointed brides to other men, in one ease to tbe intended best man iu the wedding that did not ake place, A NOnTH-COUNTRY WOMAN. ] have married one rough Northcountrywoman to fourhusbands within 10 years, and < n the last occasion she herself planted down a fee of a guinea—tliin was s present —and said wi'h a laugh, 'There, parson, that's tho fourth you've tied meto — you bring mo good luck, you do ; the last three were bad 'tins." 1 refused the present. On one occasion a girl presented herself to bo married who looked tho merest child. Even though things bad gone so far, I asked her to step into the vestry whilst I asked her a few cpiestions. I noticed particularly that the people by whom she was accompanied wore quite of a different class to herself, and that tho bridegroom was a slangy, horsey-looking young man of low type. A severe cross-examination and a telegram elicited tho fact that the girl was only a school miss of 14, and that both she and the young man had made a false declaration. Her parents wero rich, and I shall never forget their gratitude to me. But we often make these inquiries, and some clergymen like personally to see the people who come to put up the banns, instead of leaving this to the (.dork. I have heard of man and women swearing in a court of justice that they had no memory whatever as to being married, and 1 can actually conceive it as being perfectly possible from what I have seen. A man or woman under tho influence of longcontinuad drugging or doses of alcohol might, whilst seeming stuptd—as a great many bridegrooms especially do—go through tho whole thing like a dream.