JAIL FOR DON JUAN

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 18

JAIL FOR DON JUAN

“Ran Away From Shadows”

“I think this • is one of the worst cases I have ever had before me,” declared the Recorder of London. Mr. Holman Gregory, K C., at the Old Bailey, after he had listened to the amazing peccadilloes of John Albert Tempest, aged 34, described as a traveller and a native of liverpool. Tempest, debonair and smartly dressed, pleaded guilty to two charges of bigamy and one of obtaining money by false pretences, the allegations against him being that he married Viola Rosetta Thwaites and Dorinda Ashley while his legal wife was alive, and obtained the sum of £8 from Gertrude Clair Monk, with intent to defraud. Tempest, it was explained by the prosecuting counsel. Mr. H. Elam, was legally married in 1918. In November, 1929, be “married” a young woman named Viola Dunn, whose name was given as Thwaites, but he deserted her three months later. Then he wooed again, and in April, 1931, using the name of Harrison, he contracted his second bigamous “marriage” with Miss Ashley at Liverpool. Posing as a reporter on a newspaper iu Manchester, Tempest ingratiated himself with the sister of his second bigamous wife, and obtained a sum of money from her. When he was arrested at Carlisle he declared that

for four years he had been “running away from shadows,” with the result that he had got “deeper in the mire,” Detective Barrett told the Court that Tempest had seven convictions for various offences, dating back to 1914. At the time of his legal marriage (in 1918) he held a commission in the Army. He was three times wounded (luring the war. All last year he was employed by different firms as a canvasser. After he left the employ of a vacuum cleaner company in Glasgow it was alleged that 14 cases of fraud were discovered. In September last he obtained a position as salesman to a vacuum cleaner company in Manchester. He received a cheque for £lO, and it was alleged that he forged the name of the manager and obtained the money. Tempest protested that he had tried to turn over a new leaf. f The Recorder (scornfully) : Tried to turn over' a new leaf—.when you have been marrying women under false pretences and committing frauds! Is that trying to turn over r. new leaf? You obtained the bodies of these women by fraud and one you deserted. Sentencing Tempest to five years’ penal servitude, the Recorder said the punishment would cover all the offences.