A Voyage to New Zealand.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 4, 25 January 1911, Page 8

A Voyage to New Zealand.

STRANGE STORY OF A RUNAWAY WIFE. MARRIED FATHER’S GROOM. (From Gur Special Correspondent.) LONDON, December 16. A strange and pathetic story of a runaway wife’s voyage to New Zealand, in the Rimutaka was told in the Divorce Court this week. The King’s Proctor had intervened in a divorce suit, in which a decree nisi was granted to Mrs. Pretty, a girl of twenty, who married her father’s groom. The King’s Proctor alleged that material facts had been kept from the Court, and that Mrs. Pretty had herself been guilty of misconduct with a Mr. Alfred Halfpenny, jun. Mr. and Mrs. Pretty had lived in Sunningdale, where Pretty became a fly-driver. About May, 1908, Mrs. Pretty made the acquaintance of Alfred Halfpenny, jun., who drove a fly for Mr. Pretty. Subsequently Halfpenny mentioned that he was going to New Zealand, and Mrs. Pretty asked if he would take her. Accordingly, Halfpenny went to London on June 9, 1908, and booked two passages to New Zealand. The couple met at Waterloo, and stayed for several nights at a neighbouring hotel. They went on. board the s.s. Rimutaka, where a cabin had been taken in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Halfpenny. On the voyage they quarrelled over an engineer on board, and when they reached New Zealand Mrs. Pretty went to some rich relatives, and Halfpenny started work as a plasterer. When she returned to London, Mrs. Pretty started divorce proceedings against her husband, and nothing was said in Court about the woman having left her husband with Halfpenny. Mr. Duke, K.C., tor Mrs. Pretty, said that when the jury had heard the whole of the story, they would see that the remarkable series of occurrences about which evidence had been given only formed a chapter in one of the most tragic records in the life of a young woman which could possibly be imagined. Mrs. Pretty was now only twenty-one years of age, the daughter of a gentle-

man and with wealthy connections. At an early age she lost her mother, and when only eighteen or nineteen years one of the men servants assaulted her. In consequence of her condition, she married the man, and lived with him for a twelvemonth, practically an outcast. Then she decided to live with her husband no longer. She communicated with, her relatives in New Zealand, and, being an outcast in this country, and in the hands of a man who was taking advantage of the position in which he had placed her to fleece her, insult her, and degrade her, she decided to leave. Mrs. Gwendoline Joyce Pretty, in the box, said she was the daughter of Mr, Francis Savoury, of Farnham. In 1906 Thomas William Pretty was employed by her father as a groom. On New Year’s Eve, 1906, Pretty seduced her. They were married in the following May at a registry office. At first she went into domestic service, but only for a little while, as she and her hqsband went to Sunningdale, where they took the cab business, for which her father found tho money. Previously, when she had been unsuccessful in obtaining money from her parent, Pretty abused her. He treated her badly, and taunted her before others of having been obliged to marry him. Subsequently, when she had decided to accept an invitation of her relations to go to New Zealand, she consulted Halfpenny on the subject <sf getting there. Witness denied that there was any suggestion that Halfpenny should go to New Zealand with her. Mrs. Pretty went on to tell of her coming up to London in June, 1908, and meeting Halfpenny at Waterloo, going afterwards to the hotel. This was th® first time she had come to London unaccompanied. Afterwards they went to< the hotel, where a room had been engaged. Late in the evening Halfpenny came in, and, asked what he wanted, said he had come to tell her about th® ■ticket for the steamer. He asked her about her finances, etc., and then suggested she should throw in her lot with his. “I was very angry, and told him. I would have nothing to do with him, that I had left one man and did not intend to have anything to do with another.” To assure him she meant what she said, witness took up her weddingring, which she had placed in her bag, and threw it out of the window. Halfpenny threatened her by asking what was to prevent him informing her husband of her whereabouts. They remained in the room together, discussing th® matter, until towards morning. Halfpenny expressed his sorrow, said he had not meant what he said," and that he would go as soon as possible. He went away, and witness went to bed. Next day she learned for the first time that he was also going to New Zealand on the vessel. On board Halfpenny showed her t<3 her cabin, and followed her in. He tried to take her in his arms, but she threatened to go to the captain. Ha said, “I will tell him that you are a married woman running away from your husband, and that you owe my father money. He will put you ashore at Plymouth, and my father will have you locked up.” Mrs. Pretty said that Halfpenny offered her a wedding ring, and promised that he would not touch her. She promised to say nothing, and he left her. At night they slept in their day clothes, and she in the top bunk, and he in the lower one. Mrs. Pretty said the only relations between Halfpenny and herself were “purely business relations.” She made the acquaintance of a Mr. Stephens, a barrister, a friend of her father’s, who was subsequently consulted as to divorce proceedings. Mr. Turrell: If you are successiul in this suit are you going to marry Mr. Stephens?—l am. And docs your father approve of thia marriage?—He does. In summing up, Mr. Justice Bargrave Deane said truth was said to ba stranger than fiction, and it was for th® jurors to determine whether Mrs. Pretty had told the truth in this case. Her whole story was certainly very extraordinary. The jury found that Mrs. Pretty had. committed misconduct with Halfpenny. The Judge said he was not prepared to deal with the matter at thia moment. He would consider what he -would do. He had discretionary power, and ha might be able to exercise it. Judgment was, therefore, postponed. Mrs. Pretty broke down when she heard the verdict, and sobbed bitterly*