ORDEAL IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19663, 15 June 1927, Page 8

ORDEAL IN AMERICA.

ENGLISH COUPLE'S TRIALS. experience of actress. IMMIGRATION METHODS. IN PRISON WITH MURDERESS. The remarkable experiences in America of Mr. and Mrs. Fred E. Barron-Curtis, a British couple, were related lately on their return to England. Allowed into the United States without the necessary official papers, they were suddenly thrown into prison, Mrs. Barron-Curtis having to share a celi with a murderess and a woman bobtlegger. " I left England three years ago for Canada, where I married my wife—an English girl—she being in vaudeville and I being in an orchestra," said Mr. BarronCurtis. "We got an engagement in . Paris, Kentucky, with the Phoenix Amusement Company, and we went to the American Consul in Toronto for passports. He told us that as we were professionals we did not require them. We travelled to the frontier, and here an American official boarded the train, asked onr destination, and, on being told, simply said, ' All right,' and let us pass on. This was in 1924, but it was not until August of last year that the storm broke. " One day a man who said he was a Federal officer called on us and accused us of entering the United States without the proper papers. We explained exactly what we had been told and how we came over the border. This seemed to satisfy him, and he said it would be quite ail right and went away. A few days later we were arrested and lodged in the county gaol at Lexington, Kentucky. We could have got out on bail—that is, if we could have paid the sum of £4OO demanded, which we did not have. We got into touch with a lawyer, and we were released, four days later. " We heard nothing more until we were summoned to appear in the local Court on charges brought by the Immigration Department that we had %ntered the country without proper papers. It came out in the trial," continued Mr. BarronCurtis, with a smile,'*' that the Canadian Government had got me listed as having been born in Holland and having a wife living there, so that it appeared that I was a bigamist. Of course, I denied it, but the only result was that last April I received a copy of a deportation warrant from the Immigration Department at Washington, telling us to quit the country at our own expense unless we wanted to be deported. " Thanks to a Kentucky newspaper, which protested against the injustice done to us, and started a fund to help us back to England, we were able to avoid the warrant. The Klu Klux Klan, which is very strong in Kentucky, also did their best to obtain justice for us and contributed to the fund. We only saw them once, clad in their white hoods, and gowns, going up the mountainside; but people very seldom see them, and all their communications to us were through their Chief Clansman,"