LOVE AFTER DESPAIR

Levin Daily Chronicle, 21 September 1918, Page 4

LOVE AFTER DESPAIR

EVEN ZOLA IMAGINED NOTHING

MORE DRAMATIC AND TEKEXBIiE.

"Even Zola could not have written , a more dramatic and more terrible story,'' said Sir E. Marshall Hall, appearing at the London Session on be-, half of a young woman, Gertrude Ebermann, who appealed against a sentence of four months' hard labour, and for a recommendaton for expulsion for" going to Folkestone,,a prohibited area, ■without a permit, she being an alien enemy. It was true, said Sir Marshall, that she was born in Leipzig' in 1888. Her parents wer e German, but her father was naturalised here in 1886. She was brought to England when Only eleven weeks 'old, and the only language she knew' Was English. When she wag sixteen her father drugged and assaulted her, and for that he was sentenced at the Old Bailey-to five years' penal servitude. She obtained work with a West End firm, but I after her father came out frem gaol j he made her life'unbearable. !

In her despair, the girl married the first man she was, introduced to—a man nariied Ebermann, a German hairdresser, who was almost as bad as Jier father.

Then, in 1916, Gertrude met a wounded South African soldier. He proved himself a gentleman, and instructed counsel to appear for her. . "That attachment," said Sir Marshall, "ripened into deep affection, and he asked her to4narry him. . Then she told her sad tale. The husband refused to dry orce her, and - she committed the unpardonable »in of 'becoming his - mistress - because she could not be his wife. In that way she visited him at week-ends at Folkestone." The'' Bench reduced:; the sentence to a flnfi of £10, and added that the recommendation for deportation should be annulled.