ANOTHER AMY BOCK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 655, 6 May 1929, Page 1

ANOTHER AMY BOCK

New Zealand Woman’s Confession WAS MARRIED AS A MAN Amazing Revelation on Deathbed (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (United Service) Received 12.10 p.m. NEW YORK, Sunday. A MESSAGE from Oakland, California, says that, confessing on his deathbed, Deresley Morton, a New Zealander known as Peter Stratford, announced: “I am not a man; I am a woman.”

gjHE disclosed that she had masqueraded as a man for 20 years. Stratford who in life was a nonentity except to a small group of religious mystics, in death will attract world-wide attention. She was buried in a pauper’s grave at the San Lorenzo Cemetery before two spectators, neither of whom was a mourner. Morton came to New York many years ago from New Zealand, and quickly became known for her literary ability. She then disappeared, and not until three days ago was found again. She died in hospital from tuberculosis. In the name of Stratford she had married, and had carried on correspondence with numerous other women. Her “widow” is Mrs. Elizabeth Rowland, of Kansas City. She deserted her so-called husband five months ago when she learned of the hoax. Letters to and from women were found among Morton’s effects. Twined in every line of these letters, stretching into the innermost moments of

Morton’s life, are threads of the mystic Mohammedan belief from the Orient known as Sufism. Sufism is a form of Mahomeddan mysticism. The woollen dress which occassioned the name, was imitated from Christian hermits by. early Moslem ascetics, who for a time observed Mahomet’s prohibition of celibacy; but a Sufi monastery was founded by Ramleh before A/D. 800, and thereafter celibacy was permitted although not enjoined. The form of Sufism best known out side Islam was developed in Persia under Shiah influence. It was attended by a revival of Zoroastrian tenets, influenced by Vendauta, Buddhist. Neoplatonist teaching. Thence emerged a pontheoistic philosophy which taught that religious creeds are matters of indifference, that good and evil are unrealities, that there is no free will, and that mystical absorption is attainable before death by ecstatic union. This Sufi teaching pervaded the Persian poetry of the schools of Abu Said, Hafi Sa’di, and Kumi, met with a sympathetic reception in medieval India, and permeates the prevalent free-thought of modern Persia.