Married Without Knowing It

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, 17 December 1891, Page 3

Married Without Knowing It

The Appeal Court in New South Wales are just now considering the novel point whether it is possible for a man to be married without knowing it. The case is, on 3 in which Mr James Tyson, jun., seeks to have' his marriage with the respondent, Harriet Tyson, or Harriet Logan, nullified. Tyson, is seems, married Mrs Logan in Melbourne on December 15th, 18S1, believing she •was a widow. As a matter of fact it appears that the respondent was married to a man named Logan in Victoria in 1852, she being sixteen years of age at the time; and she bad two children by him. They ■afterwards separated, and as nothing was heard of Logan for some considerable time it was concluded he was dead. It was subsequently discovered, however, that Logan was in reality alive at the time Mrs • Logan contracted the marriage with Tyson. This, of course, would vender the latter union bigamous and of no effect. The case however, was complicated by the fact that in 1885 or 18S6. after Logan was really dead, Tyson went through a ceremony with Mrs Logan in a .Roman Catholic Church at Hay, which she alleged was 'a marriage, but which Tyson declared on oath he believed to be merely a sort of religious ceremony to quieten the conscience of Mrs Logan, who was a Catholic, and being in -health at the time, was desirous of being reconciled to her Church. The respondent, on the other hand, declared that it was a real marriage, k that it was witnessed by some nuns I who were concealed behind a lattice work. She asserted that she had desired to go through the ceremony in order to become a real wife, and that Tyson had consented to it. "Wag. this mysterious religious service a real marriage ceremony 7 That was the real question upon which the case hung. If it was a real marriage, of course it would hold good, both parties being perfectly free to contract it. To the first marriage there was an invisible but not the less fatal "just impediment" in the person of Mr Logan, and Mr Tyson would be entitled to have the marriage declared null and void. His account of the ceremony which took place in the Roman Catholic Church at Hay was certainly a little singular. He said : — " I did not know what there were any nuns behind a screen. I did not see any nuns there, and I did not think there was any person there. Not a soul entered the church while we were there. Keiley read some Latin from a book. 1 am a little deaf.. He mumbled over it in the same manner as I have heard priests read before. After he had been reading prayers for some time he handed me a ring. He held the book open, and asked me to put the ring on the book. I did so. He passed it into his right hand, where I noticed he had a handful of rings, which I recognised as hers, and I noticed also that sbe had taken off every ring, and she wore a lot. She took the rings from Father Keiley, and on leaving church I saw rings on her hand again. Either before the ceremony or during, it he called me on one side and sprinkled me with son\e water, and said, ' You have been a very wicked man ; very sinful,* and > some such other remarks. I made no answer. I made no affidavit or statutory declaration of any kind. I wrote my name in no book, nor did my wife, to my knowledge. Nothing was said by ' my wife before or sinco or at the time about going through a marriage ceremony. Father Keiley said nothing whatever about marrying me. I heard no words of a marriage ceremony in English, only some words referring, as I thought, to my previous marriage. He said nothing whatever about marrying me. He did not ask me whether there was any impediment to our getting married. He put no. such questions to me at all." Clearly if this was a marriage ceremony at all it was performed with " maimed rites." Counsel for Mr Tyson urged that on this evidence it was impossible to hold that he knew he was being married, and these could be no marriage unless the parties knew they were being married. On the other band, it seems difficult to conceive of a man of ' full age and sane mind going through a ceremony in a church, with ft woman, a prip.ofc and a rinff n.*

(,hej c!-):c-f factors i.? ih>? situation-. j without satifsivirsg hhnsoif a 3 to "what ■ all thor.Q things rrjent. Thsra v/as al<;o tho a?Jliv.'arrl fact that Mr Tyson, who vn~ n Protestant, allowed himself to b? baptised by the \ priest - also, according to his version } of the cass, in pure ignorance of what tho cftremnnv portended. Tho Divorce Court, before whom tho case j wa.3 originally bronrfn"-, heM itnfc the poonrid ceremony v.Tt -, a #ood marmotand dismissed tho petition. ' The Appeal Court has taken time to I comid.fi> 1 its decision. : I