MUCH- MARRIED MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12955, 26 August 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

MUCH- MARRIED MAN.

REMARKABLE STORY IN DIVORCE CASE. A .nuMAiiKABLi: story of three continents was told when the matrimonial adventures of Ernest Moore were related to Sir John Corel Barnes, upon the petition of his wife, Harriett Moore, for a divorce on the ground of her husband's desertion, cruelly, and bigamy. Mr. Bayford, for the wife, said that the parties first became acquainted at Navington, in Kent. The lady went to Queensland. Mr. Moore followed shortly after. They became engaged, and in July, 1889, were made husband and wife at Christ Church, Cook Island, near New Zealand. Three children were born to them. In March, 1892, they returned to England, and went to reside at Chatham. A year later Mr. Moore sailed away as '' purser on a ship," and he stayed away until 1889. Occasionally he wrote letters to his wife from America, In tho spring of 1899 he paid a Hying \'isit to England, and practically kidnapped his eldest son, aged nine years. 'there was a scene and a struggle, but Mr. Moure managed to wrest the boy from his mother's grasp and take him to America. Subsequently Mrs. Moore learnt that her husband had committed bigamy in America, having, in fact, in 1897 married Florence G. Parker. He lived with his second wife .for about eighteen months, when she died. At once Mr. Moore wrote to Miss Parker's sister in terms which, said counsel, showed the class of man he was. The letter was as follows: —

My dear Annie. Oh, how happy I should lie To once more east my cares on thee.

"This appears very weak, doesn't it, sister, for a man Id east liis cares upon a woman? But with God's help 1 will straggle nil, and for one who has more blessed faith than I, 1 shall keep struggling. . . . I joined the Kpuortli League Society the other day. I am the third man only, and there are about thirty females! . . . Wo had most blessed times, praise the Lord." Mr. Moore came again to England in January, 1300, and his wife, having tiled her petition, endeavoured to serve the citation upon him. But he bolted back to America before that could be done. in July of last year Mrs. Moore received another shock. Iter husband had taken to himself his third "wife." Ernest Lionel Moore, bachelor, as he then called himself, was married to Lottie I'a.rtelow, 21, spinster, at the Congregational Church, Briarclilfe Manor, New York, bv the Rev. Alexander McColl, on October 26, 1902. Mrs. Harriett Moore, of Staplehurst Road, M'elton, Sittingbourne, Kent, in corroborating counsel's statement, said that the reason of her husband's second visit to England in 1900 was doubtless bocause he had threatened to take the Other two children. His identity was established by the tattooed design of a woman on his arm. The President granted a decree nisi with costs.