THE PROBLEM OF BIGAMY

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1929, Page 3

THE PROBLEM OF BIGAMY

INCREASE IN GREAT BRITAIN LOOPHOLES IN THE LAW. i A MAGISTRATE’S CRITICISM. More and more numerous bigamy cases in Britain are drawing public attention to the need for tightening up the law relating to marriage.

It has been suggested that the simplest and best way to discourage bigamous unions is to adopt the French practice and require each party to produce an official birth certificate, procured immediately beforehand. .If the person named has been married in France and if the death of his or her spouse has been registered the certificate bears a record of the fact. It is thus extremely difficult for anyone married in the Republic to contract a bigamous union.

Bigamy, says a writer in the London Daily Mail, is made easy in thia country mainly because so many women and girls are prepared to take on face value the. firat presentable man who pays them attentions. The only virtue these easily pleased dupes require from a man is.his expressed admiration of their oAvn charms. Such a good judge they hold must make a good husband.

In scores of bigamy cases that have come before my notice in the courts I have been amazed at the way in which casual acquaintance has been followed by a hasty marriage without any serious attempt on the part of the “bride” and her parents to investigate the “bridegroom’s” own account of himself. The easiest confidence trick played in this country is that of the bigamist.

FEAR OF BLACKMAIL.

Very different is the method of th® man. * He always inquires more or. less skilfully into the character and prosi pecto of the girl he is persuading into a mock marriage.

Many of the men bigamists whom I have seen in the dock have given themselves up to the police and are convicted on their own confession. Curiously enough, these self-confessed bigamists are usually happy with their second “wives” and they are driven either from fear of blackmail or through the revival of a' suppressed conscience to take the punishment earned by their guilt. AA z hen the two women in the case appear in court together it i s often seen that they are of distinctly different types, physically and temperamentally. The second wife is generally the right choice and she it is who as a rule stands by the man who has done her such a deep injury. Few of the bigamists I have met have been brutes. Rather have they been of the harmless, inoffensive type, the sort of men born to be mothered—■ or bullied. PROFESSIONAL BIGAMISTS. The woman bigamist usually breaks the law from ignorance rather than design. She concludes that if she haa not seen her. husband for two vears she is at liberty to marry again. The professional bigamist, the accomplished man of the’ world who marries women of substance, borrows money from them to “set up a business and then leaves them in rapid succession is difficult to catch. He selects his dupes with great care and he owes his escape from justice chiefly to the reluctance of his victims to brave a scandal. But there would be fewer bigamous marriages if women and girls would choose their husbands as they choose their friends. The girl who accepts a motor ride from a perfect stranger is no more asking for trouble than the girl or woman who permits her vanity to overcome her discretion when • a man of whom fhe really knows nothing asks her to marry him. • t AVhat is needed to discourage bigamy in this country is -not so much the system of registration employed in France as the exercise of common sense. 1 ; PERFUNCTORY AVITNESSES. The manner in which marriages are conducted at registry offices was severely criticised by Mr. Mead, the magistrate at Marlborough Street, recently, in a case of alleged bigamy. Stanley George Garrod/ aged 26, a plate-room porter at a AVcst End hotel, and Mary Ann Silverton, aged 27, a counter-hand, of Falkirk Street, Shoreditch, N., were committed for trial on the charge.

Sidney Dyson, registrar at the Kingsland road registry office. Shoreditch, E., answering Mr. Mead, eaid that he could not recognise Ga.rrod and Silverton. They had 300 marriages a year, and he could not possibly recollect all the parties. 'Mr. Mead: Do you allow bystanders to act ae witnesses? -

Mr. Dyson acquiesced. “Then I think it is a scandal,” remarked Mr. Mead in severe tones. “We tell them every time to bring their own witnesses,” said Mr. Dyson. Mr. Mead: Don’t you satisfy yourself that these persons are unknown and that they have not been married before ?

Mr. Dyson: There are two clerks in the office.

NO POWER TO REFUSE

To be witnesses ? Don’t you ask them to identify the parties?—lt requires two witnesses. We have no power to send people away. “I don’t know whether you have ever seen this exposed on the stage?” said Mr. Mead. Air. Dyson said that he had not.

The evidence was that Silverton was married at St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch to Thomas Silverton, and that on December 4 she and Garrod went through a form of marriage at Kingsland road registry office. Garrod, in a written statement, said he suggested the marriage. Silverton agreed, though he told her they would be liable to imprisonment for bigamv. They agreed if found out to bear the brunt of it. 1

’ The woman said that she remarked to Garrod as a joke, “I am looking for a new husband,” and he then suggested marriage. ° Both said they had not lived together as man and- wife, but Garrod eaid he