GRETNA GREEN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19906, 17 September 1934, Page 10

GRETNA GREEN

CONTINENTAL “TWIN.” Gretna Green has a Continental “twin” in the village of La Madeleine on the Franco-Belgian border near Lille, it has just been revealed. But a shock awaits many of those who have been wed there, for the discovery of a quick-marriage plot has shown a great number of the ceremonies to have been illegal. The authorities in this part of France were recently struck with the fact that La Madeleine had more marriages in the last two years than any other town in the region. In fact, the number of marriages exceeded by far the housing accommodation of the hamlet or the neighbouring villages; yet all the couples had been registered as domiciled there. The Prefect of the Department went to the town hall of La Madeleine to investigate, and he soon found the solution of the mystery. The Belgian law lays it down that persons in a divorce suit may not remarry until three years after the final decree has been pronounced.

To get round this law, ingenious persons had drawn up a plan for taking the parties across into France, and having them married there after they had been provided with false certificates of domicile to comply with the French law making six weeks' residence necessary for foreigners desiring to marry. M. Pierre Flansent, secretary of one of the departments at the local town hall, is alleged to have confessed that he had facilitated these clandestine marriages by issuing certificates of domicile to people who had only crossed the frontier for the day in order to be married. His charge for the accommodation was about £lO, and, though he admits having sold at least 200 of these certificates, the inquiry suggests that a much larger number have been Issued. In most cases these “Gretna” mar-riages-of-convenience are illegal, the necessary conditions regarding domicile not having been complied with. In other cases certain divorce decrees will be rescinded. It is stated that the parties to the fraud had recently extended thenoperations to cater for a number of English and American couples.