MARRIED IN PRISON.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13488, 31 July 1907, Page 8

MARRIED IN PRISON.

Love has been laughing at the locksmiths again, and a man sentenced for the rest of his natural life to penal servitude in a German prison has just married his gaoler's daughter. A somewhat similar thing recently happened in an English prison, though the term to which thie bridegroom was sentenced was a shorter one. He was a man bearing an honoured name, which he had humbled in the d\ist. While he yet prospered ho proposed to the woman he loved. She refused him. Perhaps tho sequel was a matter of cause and effect. Anyhow, he fell, and the yicar'of a "West End church, whon visiting a famous penal settlement, found him there. "Who acted as intermediary we are not told, but the broken man received om» morning a note saying: "You once asked me to marry j»u. -I said 'No.' Perhaps if you asked me again the result might bo different." From his prison cell he made tho second proposal, and was accepted, and the clergyman who had found him in gaol' married him to the woman he loved. A different story comes from a French penal settlement, where o male convict and a female convict desired to marry. Such marriages are not uncommon, ?ml tho governor offered no objection. Ho asked only that he should be supplied with proof that the man was single. A priest volunteered to get the necessary proofs. "Were you not married iii France?" ho asked. "I was," tho man answered. "And your wife is dead?" "She is." "Have you any documentary evidence to show that she is dead?" "1 have not." "That being so," said the priest, "I am afraid that I must decline to marry yon." There was an aAykward pause, and. the man looked with embarrassment at his prospective bride. "I could prove thai my former wife is dead," he said slowly* at -last. "Row can you prove it?" he was asked. And he answered : "I was sent here for killing her." The .marriage followed.