WED FOR A WAGER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 141001, 20 April 1920, Page 3

WED FOR A WAGER.

SEVENTEEN-YEAE-OLD GIRL’S FOUR, HUSBANDS. o Vi ■ Although ner age is but seventeen, Mrs Annie Harper has no fewer than four husbands—all of them very.much alive. She has the remarkable record of having committed bigamy three times in as many years. Owing to Government intervention the enterprising young lady will not have the opportunity fo_ marrying again for at least two years. Had she confined her activities .to acquiring husbands only all might have been well, but she went in for forging cheques. Her first matrimonial venture’ was made when she was fourteen, in eonsequence of a bet with a girl friend that she would secure a husband within six davs. She accomplished this feat in three days’ time, winning the waaer 0 f £5. Incidentally, she falsely declared her age as eighteen. The husband was twenty-two years of age, and of such uninteresting personality that his wife tired of him in a fortnight, and drove him from the home. Soon after she married again, tins time to spite her acquaintances, who had declared that she would never persuade a certain young man, well known for his hatred of women, to contract matrimony. The union proved a failure, and within a month’s time the original Mrs Harper married a parson, out of admiration of his beautiful preaching. Matrimony, however, would appear to have exerted a baneful effect on her •husband’s sermons, for his preaching failed to satisfy his wife, who, three months later, celebrated her nuptials with a fourth man, a budding pugilist this time.

Money being scarce,. the woman resorted to flic forgery of wealthy persons’ signatures to cheques, which she cashed, applying flic proceeds to the purchase of smart clothes. This was Mrs Harper’s undoing,- and, the frauds being discovered by the New A ork authorities, she was sentenced to imprisonment for two years.