BIGAMIST SENTENCED

Southland Times, Issue 21274, 20 December 1930, Page 8

BIGAMIST SENTENCED

DETERRENT TERM IMPOSED. (Per United Press Association). Auckland, December 19. A bigamist, who married a young woman in Dcvonport last June when he had a wife in England, was sent to gaol for three years when he appeared for sentence before Mr Justice Smith in the Supreme Court. The prisoner was George Lionel Allen, aged 25, a steward, for whom Mr Schramm appeared. Immediately after the offence, the prisoner deserted from the New Zealand Division of the Navy, said Mr Schramm, in 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 England. For 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 claims on his pay. In the period he had lived with his second wife, he treated her well and counsel asked the Court to make the sentence as light as possible. His Honour 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 the prisoner to believe that she was dead. Notwithstanding that, he deliberately married a woman in Devonport and did her a cruel wrong as he must realize. In passing sentence of three years’ imprisonment with hard labour, His Honour said the circumstances were such that the sentence must be a deterrent one.