DISCOVERY BY FILM

Hokitika Guardian, 8 September 1931, Page 3

DISCOVERY BY FILM

HUSBAND' WHO DESERTED.

LONDON, August 22.

How a film led to a wife finding the husband who had deserted her has just been revealed in a divorce court action.

When visiting London in 1929, Mrs Edwin Robotham, 60, a native of t §horeljaii) J . J S(Gy i an American, film (Sailed “Buck Privates,” which featured her husband. who disappeared six • weeks after their' marriage at Windsor in 1899, when lie ! was a corporal in the Second Life Guards.

. The. outcome of her discovery was the adjournment of the Portland, Oregon, Court of a. ease.'in which her’husband, now a retired captain in the American Army, was seeking to divorce her on the. ground, that she made him unhappy. .

Mrs. Robotham, when her husband left her, waited all night at the barracks, and when lie did not come 4iOfile/i ; 'se‘!trob6d ■’•‘th® 5 ’’llbs'pitals and mortuaries for weeks, eventually seem-, ing the presumption of his death.

• After seeing the film, however, she wrote ter the Hollywood film company, and the adjutant-general, of the American Army, to' whom her husband admitted his identity. He sent his wife a dollar a week, declaring that he was too poor to provide her with a home. When the divorce papers arrived, trio wife disclosed the situation, as she did not wish to end her life as a divorced woman, when she had done-noth-ing to deserve it.