GUILTY OF BIGAMY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21214, 20 December 1930, Page 9

GUILTY OF BIGAMY.

NAVAL STEWARD’S OFFENCE. THREE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT. (Peb United Pbess Association.) AUCKLAND, December 19, A bigamist, who married a vounc woman in Devonport last June when gaol* for a nT lfe ln England ’ was sent to gaol for three years when he appeared for sentence before Mr Justice Smith in t S T Gme C° urt , to - da y- The prisoner was George Lionel. Allen, aged 25, a Je e are a d ’ Wh ° m Mr Sclu ' amra a I” / “Immediately after the offence the prisoner deserted from the New Zealand division of the navy,” 6 aid Mr Schiamni, 111 order to cover up his present Offence. He had been in the navy for seven years and had come out to New Zealand on one of the warships from Lnglancl, lor his desertion, he had been sentenced to 90 days’ imprisonment. The fact that he had married in New Zealand became known to the naval authorities when his second wife made a claim on his pay. I n the period he had lived with lus second wife he had treated her well and counsel asked the court to make the sentence as Imht as possible. 0 His Honor described it as a deliberate offence of bigamy. Apparently the wife in England wrote several times a week and there was no reason whatever for tho piisoner to believe that she was (leach Notwithstanding that, he delihcratoly married a woman in Devonport and did her a cruel wrong, as he must now realise.

. In passing a sentence of three years’ imprisonment with hard labour, his Honor said the circumstances were such that the sentence must he a deterrent.