ALLEGED BIGAMY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 151, 23 December 1929, Page 12

ALLEGED BIGAMY

PAINTER FOR TRIAL

A painter, of Brooklyn, James William Hudd, aged 39, appeared on remand in tho Magistrate's Court to-day on charges of having committed bigamy at Wellington and of having made a false statement in a marriage register. The accused was represented by Mr. Ongley.

Detective W. Murray said that when he interviewed the accused with reference to alleged bigamy he showed him certain documents, letters, and photographs. Ho showed Hudd a certified eoPy_ relating to his marriage in England, and the photographs included one of himself taken in England; a photograph of his wife in England, and other photographs taken on the occasion of the wedding in England. Hudd made a statement, in which he said he was marlied in England on 23rd May, 1915. Subsequently he and his wife parted, • and later on he was informed by his father-in-law that his wife was dead. About a dozen other people in Croydon, where he was living, told him that he wife was dead or that they thought she was dead. He did not trouble to verify the statement, however, and left England for Wellington in 1922. On 14th May, 1927, at St. Peter's Church, Wellington, he married his present wife. It was true he described himself as a bachelor and reduced his age, but this he did at his wife's request. His wife knew he had been married before, and he alleged that he told her that, although he had no actual proof, he had been told and believed that his iirst wife was dead.

The present wife of the accused gave evidence that it was during Hudd's absence in hospital that she found in the house a marriage certificate and a birth certificate showing that the accused had been married in Eugland and tha,t ho was six years elder than he said he *-<as.

A.*Ser other evidence had been given, the «-jcused •rfeaded cot guilty, and was committed to the Supreme" Court for trial.