A ROMANTIC MARRIAGE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 945, 28 May 1880, Page 3

A ROMANTIC MARRIAGE.

The singular death of a lady at Plymouth has disclosed a most extraordinary state of affairs. The lady arrived in Plymouth in company with a man named Inch, who took apartments, and represented that he had just returned from India, where he had been in service for seventeen years. The female who accompanied him, and who, he said, was his wife, appeared to be a lady. Shortly after the women was confined, and Mr Jackson, a local surgeon, was called in to attend her. The man, however, disowned; the paternity of the infant, and, turning upon his wife, called her foul names, so distressing her that the nurse and other occupants of the adjoining room threatened to report the circumstance to Mr Jackson. The man’s dislike to the child gradually increased, nhd in a few days he gave directions that the mother should not be allowed to suckle it, and expressed a wish that it were dead. This conduct was, ft is stated, obviously affecting the conditiou of the woman, and the medical man gave him to understand that if death ensued he should withhold the certificate, loch subsequently consulted a l>r Thompson, and alleging that he was very dissatisfied with the treatment which his wife had been receiving induced that gentleman to visit her. To Dr Thomp on the man made some extraordinary revelations. He stated that some twelve years ago he was in the employment of Ills wife’s father (a Scotch baronet), and that he was in the habit of riding out with her in the capacity of groom. On one occasion she left home to pay- j .visit to her uncle—a gentleman of position in the jS’orth—and he went with her as her attendant. Whilst there she made a proposal of marriage to him, and Inch consented to elope with her, conducting her to Lis native town, Torquay', where the ceremony took place. Inch has made two or three statements as to his subsequent career. He says that they soon parted, and he went to America, whilst his wife remained at home and formed an intimacy with an artilleryman at Christchurch during his absence On his return, however, although he was cognisant of her condition, he induced the woman to leave her paramour to accompany him. The woman on her deathbed aokuowledged that Inch was not the father of the child, hut said that he knew her condition when she went with him. When her husband was absent she told the women about her that he had threatened to shoot her unless she left the soldier, and the dread with which he inspired her led her to consent. Inch also told Dr Thompson that his wife had always been consumptive, and as she was in a dying state when that gen • tleman Visited her, he certified when she died that phthisis was the cause of death.

Tlis doctors, however, disagree as to the real cause of death. Inch was in a poverty stiicken condition and he was obliged to seek relief from the parish officer. The neighbors procured the necessaries, and administered them to the woman without informing Inch of their source. Inch has had three children by deceased; and the eldest, a buy of thirteen, will, it is said, be entitled t0L13,000 in his mother’s rights, when he comes of age. He is now under the care of Inch’s mother.