BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18772, 28 July 1924, Page 4

BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE.

WIFE'S SAD DISCOVERY. i The extraordinary story of a wife who discovered alter 16' years .of married Itf» thai she was not a wife at all, has been Revealed in Elobart. In the early part cf last year, George Anderson Smith fired two shots a£ Mary E. Smith, wound- ; ing her so severely that for a long time her life was despaired of. Snaith was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and Mr. Justice Crisp also ordered that, at the expiration of that time, Smith should bo detained in a reformatory prison during- the Governor's pleasure. It has since been found that Smith's marriage to the woman was bigamous, and that his first wife ,is still living. The girl whom" the second ''wife" reared as rt daughter, and whoso mother Smith had said was dead, has since been, claimed by the original Mrs. Smith. ' . The second Mrs. Smith said to the polios :-r-When I married Smith at Queenstown, he told me that he was a widower, and-that-his wife had died in Kentucky, "when the daughter Mona was only six ! days old. After we had settled down, "the girl came to live with us. That was 16 years ago.. Sometimes Mona would say to - her father: " I do not know wheilier I; am your little/ girl at all. I bell ivo you stole m©.'* Her father would then tell her about her mother's: dying in America. Then one day 1 received a letter with the Melbourne postmark on it. V-1 opened it. It waisjL from Mona's mother. I bad mace .the awful discovery j that I was not George Ssaith's wife."