AN INGENIOUS BIGAMIST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3142, 11 February 1911, Page 4

AN INGENIOUS BIGAMIST.

MIXED MATRIMONIAL CAREER. MARRIED NOBODY BUT HIS FIRST WIFE. An ingenious defence- to a charge of bigamy was heard in me court or Criminal Appeal, London, when Frederick Cnachvick appealed from a sentence of six mouth's narcl labor, imposed at Manchester. Mr. Gibbon said the prisoner pleaded guilty to the charge, nut now said l*.e did so under a misapprehension, and he really had an excellent dercnc-e-. Chadwick stated lie was going to plead guilty, when Iris solicitor advised him to plead guilty, and lie might then get oli lightly. (Laughter.) The Lord Chief Justice —Did lie not try to get rid of the first marriage my saying that it was bigamous, because he was already married to somebody else? (Laughter.) Mr Gibbon —It was true that he committed bigamy in 1883, and he was then convicted for an offence which in his view lie did not- commit at all. -(Laughter.) Prisoner .said lie married in 1876 a woman named Isabella Hamilton, who died in- 1886. Before that ho went through a form of marriage with a woman named Grant, and cm his own showing that was bigamous. (Laughter.) In lt‘os he married a girl named Alice Yeale, and he contended that was not a bigamous marriage because his real wife, was then . 'dead. The Lord Chief Justice —But he had married Grant. Mr. Gibbon —A es, and lie says that was not a good marriage, because his wife was alive when h(>.imfrried her. (Laughter.) In addition, he said Vealc was already married when lie married her —(loud laughter)— and, said counsel, that was quite true. In J 919 lie married a woman named Snow, and that formed the foundation of the charge on which lie was sentenced at Manchester. His argument now was j that the last was not-a .bigamous union, as lie had not married anybody at all except-his first-wife in 1576. (Laughter). The Lord Chief Justice said he could not understand why. if the man had such an ingenious defence, lie did not raise it before. Cminsil said- Chadwick stated that bis reason for not doing so was because ho had not committed ( bigamy in the way the prosecution said < •he had, although lie had committed the , offence in a way they know nothing • about. (Loud laughter.) The court ( dismissed the appeal. , •' = ' = 1