WED TWICE, BUt NO BIGAMIST

NZ Truth, Issue 1253, 5 December 1929, Page 7

WED TWICE, BUt NO BIGAMIST

Maori Thought First Wife Dead, So He Married Again

NO CASE TO ANSWER, SAID HIS HONOR

(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Christc\mrch Representative..) Though it had the assistance of both wives to try. and prove that James Wiwi Norton, a quarter-caste native, was a bigamist, the Crown failed to establish proof that Norton knew his first wife was alive when he entered into his. second marriage contract and he was acquitted without having to speak on his own behalf.

•THE charge against Norton was that Norton said !his reason for offering ' 1 (having married Annie McDonald to marry the girl Welsh w^s that he at Blenheim m February, 1909, he ■went through a 'form of marriage with Isabella Nichol Welsh at Christchurch , m December, 1923. The law provides that no man shall be guilty of bigamy unless the Crown can prove that • the accused knew at some time during the seven years prior l^to his second marriage that his first ■wife was alive; , Norton's case the Crown ProseI^Htor, Mr. A: T. Donnelly, told the jury. ■JHat the Crown could not do this and failed to see where Norton had a HBasc to answer-. '. • BY Norton's statement to the police HB when he was first interviewed m connection with the charge was to W the effect that when he was eightF een years of age, and. living m I Blenheim; he met a girl named r Annie McDonald who was then about 21. Some time later she told him Oie was responsible for her condition and he wanted to leave Blenheim, but the girl's brothers would not let him until he married her. He did so, and after living at Kaikoura for some time he left her and. he i had never seen her since. At the end of 1922 Norton was a ■boarder m the Douglas Hotel m Dunedin where he met Isabella Nichol Welsh. When he found she was to be- had been thirteen years away from his I come a mother, he took her to his par- wife, who had gone and lived with an- * ent's "home at Kaikoura where the other native at Kaiko.ura and had hac child was born m September, 1923. several children. "My parents wanted to take the At the time he married his first wife child and let her go," Norton said he stated that she had two children oi m his statement, "but she prefer- whom he was not the father. • red to stay and wanted me to Annie Norton, a, middle-aged, native marry her, which I did m Novem- woman, told the court that after being ber 1923. We lived together until married to Norton they lived, at Kaia year ago, when she left me with koura. but Norton left her the same two children." . year. Three or four years afterwards

she went to live at Blenheim, where she stayed until 1928,' when she returned tp Kaikoura. . • • For fourteen years she had not seen or heard of Norton.. After 1909 she had lived with someone else. Cross-examined by Mr. C. S< Thomas, counsel for Norton, the woman said she did not' know of any rumor m 1918 that she had died of the influenza epidemic. ■ ■ . :•■_•'. Isabella Welsh, the second, wife, stated that . it ' was not until she went to live with the accused at Kaikoura 'that she learned he had been married before. When she accused him of it he replied that he had thought his first wife was dead. At this stage Mr. Thomas suggested to the court that the Crown had hot discharged the onus on it, and the judge directed the jury as a matter of law to return a . verdict of not guilty. "It .has not been proved by the Crown," said His Honor, "that the accused had any knowledge that his wife was alive, and the case clearly comes within the sub-section." The jury formally recorded a- verdict of. not guilty. ' .