SENTENCED TO BE MARRIED.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue 9301, 7 March 1907, Page 6

SENTENCED TO B E MARRIED.

j±n assize trial before Mr Justice Phillimore, the other day, came to a romantic conclusion. The prisoner, instead of being sentenced to penal servitude, was sentenced to be married.

That is to eayyhe was given the alternative of going to gaol, or of wedding the proeeeutrii, whose life he <had attempted in a fit of jealous passion. Not unnaturally, he chose the latter course, and the couple left the court linked arm in arm.

Similar cases, although rare at the assizes, are common enough in the police courts. Indeed, one London magistrate, recently retired, was so fond of arrcuttging these endings to a certain class of cases, that he got to be known jocularly as the "linkman," whfflei the court over which he presided was termed the marriage mart."

Whether or no these weddings from the dock are advisable from a moral point of view is a moot question. Mr Holmes, the famous police-court missionary, who is probably better qualified to judge than any other man living, ds decidedly of ©pinion that they are not, and has. publicly said so <Sn several occasions.

On the other band, a certain wellknown East Bad ■clergyman is so convinced to the contrary that he as in the habit of marrying sueh x couples free of charge ; and 'he points with pardonable pride to the fact that quite a considerable percentage of the unions turn out well.

Probably the truth of tihe matter is that the couples curiously mated get on together better and mo wooee, on an average, than other married people of their class. They set up "housekeeping," for the most part, in one furnished room, and thtsir wildest aspirations soair-ta nothing higher. .Mairaiage under such cituimstances -can'- obviously never be an i«eaJ of blessedness. >»