EX-CONVICT'S TWO WIVES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7923, 30 January 1904, Page 4

EX-CONVICT'S TWO WIVES.

ROMANTIC MEETING AND A HONEYMOON SURPRISE. Tlie sordid ending of a romance was reached at Old Bailey on December 16. The "hero," who turned out to.be' the villain of the piece, is named Aubrey Newton. He is forty years of agl, and described as an author. An inspector diagnosed him as a plausible and hardened criminal, well-connected, and stating himself to be the son of an Indian judge. Newton stood in the dock on a charge of bigamy. His first marriage took place in 1887, at St George's, Hanover Square, but as he pawned the wedding presents aaid went from place to place without paying rent, the couple separated. It was in 1901, at a Brighton 'theatre, that the romance crept in. One night he gallantly saved a lady from a fall on the staircase by catching her in his arms. The lady was the widow of the late LieutenantColonel Pope, of the Connaught Rangers, and her daughter, Mary Ethel .Pope waa with her. ' Newton obtained permission to call on them, and as- a result a friendship sprang up. He said that he was suffering from a serious complaint, and asked Miss Pope to marry him, in order to nurse bim through his last dying years. He represented himself as a war correspondent of the "New York Herald," at a salary of £600 a year. They were married in 1903 at St Saviour's, Pimlico. They went to Nice for i their honeymoon, and afterwards returned to England. While they were at Torquay, tbe prisoner was arrested' on ticket-of -leave. A number of previous convictions were recalled. One sentence was for forging the death certificate of his first wife, in "order to obtain funeral benefit money. The prisoner was the author of- a series of articles, entitled "Seven Years' Penal Servitude." He was sentenced to seven years' penal , servitude. The Recorder said that he could not conceive a worse_case. !