IN SUN-KISSED FIJI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19798, 19 November 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

IN SUN-KISSED FIJI.

SAD " SOUTH SEA BUBBLE."

A MAN AND A MAID. ROMANTIC MARRIAGE SEQUEL. With a friendly word of advice to a separated couple to try and settle their differences, Mr. Basil Watson the North London magistrate, adjourned a case in the hope that the husband and wife would come happily together again. lo the magistrate had been unfolded the circumstances of a broken romance of the South Seas.

The wite, Mrs. Eliza Frances Bird, complained that her husband, John Gerard Bird, had neglected to maintain her. She said that she first met him in sun-kissed Fiji, where she was engaged as a Government stenographer. According to, the story she related from the witness box. Bird told her that ne was a medical stu dent, who had completed four years of his course at King's College Hospital, and th-.t hi was in Fiji for the benefit of his health.

Th couple started their courtship and Bird gave the girl to understand that he would take her back to his parents in England until he had completed his. medical course. He informed her that he had got his A.K.C. —a theological degree—and, although he never definitely told her of his means, she thought he was a man of substantial wealth. They were married by special licence at Fiji last November and left for Auckland. When they arrived there she discovered that het husband was practically penniless and she was obliged to pawn all her jewellery. Mrs. Bird said that she and her husband were assisted with a passage to Glasgow; where they arrived without a penny and the luggage had to be left as security for their fares to Chester. At Chester she met her husband's parents for the first time, and, after staying in a hotel for a few days, they eventually came to London.

When her husband obtained a post as a schoolmaster at Buenos Aires in February, continued Mrs. Bird, they parted on good terms and it was agreed that she

should join him later. Ho allotted her his pension, supposed to be £2 a week, but which turned out to be only 16s. He returned to England by cargo boat in July. Mrs. Bird denied that she had ever definitely refused to disclose her address to her husband and declared that she could not live with him altered his ways and pulled himself together.

It was submitted, on behalf of the husband, that there had been no desertion, as Mrs. Bird had withheld her address until a home was provided for her. Defendant was not earning anything and she had declined to have anything to do with him.

The magistrate, in coming to his decision, observed that Mrs. Bird married her husband thinking that he had got more money than ho had, but that was dono every day of the week.