TOO MUCH MARRIED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12401, 24 October 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

TOO MUCH MARRIED.

QUEER TALE OF FIVE CEREMONIES AND TWO FLIGHTS. As extraordinary story of many marriages was told in the Norwich Police Court, when Mrs. Elizabeth. Fiddaiuent, of Potter-

gate-street in that city, sued her husband, Rowland Fiddament,, described as an " electric practitioner," of Hessle Road, Hull, for desertion. Mrs. Fiddament, a woman of fifty-eight, and still bearing traces of an earlier comeliness, said that in 1862, when she was seventeen, she met and married a Norwich man named James Nobbs. A few months after the wedding Nobbs left her, eaiisted for a. soldier, and ultimately went to Australia. For eleven year's she waited for news of him, and then, assume rag he was dead, married a man named Beclritt, Some years later Fiddament, who was then a youth o sixteen or seventeen, came to lodge with them, and apparently gave Mr. Beckitt some cause for jealousy. At anyrate, Beckitt followed the example of Nobbs, and ran away. Thereupon, Mrs. Beckitt and young Fiddament went through a form of marriage, the lady describing herself as a spinster. This she thought she was entitled to, she explained in cross-examination, as "a mistake had been made in her name at one iof her previous marriages." This was in I 1888. In 1890 or 1891 Mis. Fiddament— or Beckitt, or Nobbs—heard that her second husband was working at Dartford, and she and Fiddament went to London, where she asked Beckitt to come back to her and let Fiddament rcsums his old position as a lodger. Mr. Beckitt did not seem to be attracted by the proposal, and Fiddament and the lady returned to Norwich. Beckitt was soon afterwards reported to be dead, and his wife went to his funeral. She and Fiddament then went to Canada, and on their return in 1894 the pair again went through a form of marriage. Then ihev quarrelled, and Fiddament went to Hull. For eighteen montho he sent her 6s a week, and then refused to remit her any more money on the ground that he had received no definite news of the death ,of husband No. l-~the Mr. Nobbs who had ' disappeared tv-five rears earlier. In 1902 Fiddii.ment.wenb through a form of marriage with a young woman at Hull, and was "still living with her," said Mrs. Fiddament. Mr. Payne, solicitor or Fiddament, pointed out that there was an agreement between the parties that they should separate, and the magistrate, holdiug that there could in these circumstances be no desertion, dismissed the case.