BRIDE CARRIED OFF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23019, 22 April 1938, Page 9

BRIDE CARRIED OFF

ACTION BY FAMILY NEGRO HUSBAND'S ANGER (Received April 21, 6.35 p.m.) CHICAGO, April 20 An extraordinary marriage between a follower of the negro sect leader, "Father Devine," named William Stewart, also a negro, and a white girl, Ravel Lazarus, aged 27, has been broken up. The girl belongs to a prominent New York family. She disappeared after a nervous breakdown caused by over-study at a university. The bride's family took her from a flat where the couple were spending their honeymoon and had her conveyed back.to their home, in a comatose condition, in an ambulance. Stewart, a vaudeville performer from Harlem, New York, flew into a frantic rage and swore out a habeas corpus writ in an effort to secure the return of his wife. He said he would invoke 'the Lindbergh kidnapping law against the girl's brother, under which he would demand the death penalty for the latter. The negro, whose appearanco is striking, with his curled goatee and long moustache, said: "It was a case of love at first sight and now they have taken her away at the point of a gun." The bride, who had a brilliant record as a student, apparently had success-' fully thrown off the effects of her breakdown after a year's struggle and was allowed to go to a phychiatrist alone in the course of tile stages of his final treatment. She ran away when on one of these visits, apparently when her cure seemed to be assured.