A WOMAN WITH FORTY-THREE HUSBANDS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 9430, 3 June 1891, Page 6

A WOMAN WITH FORTY-THREE HUSBANDS.

Pabis, March 28.—A woman who has actually gone through the marriage service with forty-three men and swindled all but one of them within three hours after the ceremony is the latest catch of the Parisian police. The woman is the daughter of a Shropshire farmer, and worked all her schemes in France. Six years ago Eveline Leal was a handsome young English girl, who married a Frenchman who died within a month after the wedding, leaving her with no money, but with plenty of debts. To square herself with society Eveline resorted to what is known in police lingo as the “ marriage trick.” Her method of procedure was simple and ingenious. She advertised stating that she was a widow possessing a fortune of 1,200,000 francs, who wished to marry a gentleman in good circumstances belonging to the nobility or to a high commercial class. The answers were to be sent to the Post Office.

Her accomplice, who occupied the position of a companion, seems to have had the important duty of choosing the victims from among the applicants. At any rate a suitor was never admitted into Eveline’s presence unless his personal appearance was in his favour. Then he was granted a rendezvous either in her sumptuous apartments in the Champs Elysees or at one of the best hotels. -

Naturally Eveline took a different name on every occasion, for to some of the suitors to her hand and fortune she called herself Madame Yerbank, Madame Happy, Madame Decomay or Madame Bernelly. She always began by making some objection to an immediate marriage. Sometimes assuming the character of an ingenuous miss, she said her mother considered she was too young for marriage and that the applicant must wait. On other occasions the fortune or social position of her suitor was not what she desired, but in the end she always allowed herself to be captivated with the personal dualities of the would-be husbands. She often managed things so cleverly that she received rich presents from some of her editors. After getting as much as she could she would suddenly disappear. In several oases she considered it better policy to secure possession of the wedding gifts by agreeing to the marriage ceremony. For this she invariably crossed the Channel, expressing a preference that the wedding should take place in England; After tho clergyman had in all good faith pronounced the nuptial benediction she returned with her victim to the hotel, and always managed to disappear before night, but never leaving her wedding gifts behind her. Eveline had victimised thirty-two presumably intelligent men in this way before she fell in tho hands of the Paris police in the autumn of 1887, when she was sent to gaol for two years. She obtained an early release by good conduct, and at once resorted to her old tricks again. She victimised ten lovers more without detection. . ~ , , Most of the men she swindled were too abashed to inform the police, but her forty-third victim gave the police information which led to Eveline’s second arrest on Good Friday at the Hotel Meudco, Hue da Bivoli. Her dupe this time was a French viscount, who had ruined himself through gambling, and who was anxious to regild his armorial bearings with the 1,200,000 francs of the charming widow;