LONGITUDE AND MARRIAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9325, 30 March 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

LONGITUDE AND MARRIAGE.

Mr. T. Adoli'lius Trollop is puts the following knotty point in Notes and Queries :AB goes from London to Naples, leaving his wife resident in the former city. But ho, unfortunately, falls in love with a young lady at Naples ; and being a wicked man, with no fear of God and little fear of the law before his eyes, he determines to deceive her by a bigamous and invalid marriage. Ho is, accordingly, married, to all appearance legally, on board an English man-of-war in the bay, in tho presence of the captain, at eleven o'clock in the morning of February 10—tho timo being unquestionably ascertained, But the wife left in London died on that same February 10 at half-past ten in the morning, the time being certified beyond all question. Well! the case is clear and simple. AB had been a widower for half-an-hour when he married, and could, of course, legally do so. But stay ! When it was 10.30 in London it was 11.23 in Naples. Had a telegram been despatched instantly after the wife's death it would have reached Naples a few minutes later than 11.23, and would have found AB a married man of over twenty minutes' standing! His first wife died, -in fact, twenty-three minutes subsequent to tho Naples marriage, though that was authentically declared to have taken place at 11 a.m. and the wife's doath was with equal certainty shown to have occurred at 10.30. Was the marriage legal and valid, or bigamous and null ?