"DEAD” HUSBAND REAPPEARS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3769, 2 July 1907, Page 4

"DEAD” HUSBAND REAPPEARS.

Strange Marriage Tangle. An extraordinary case involving marriage, desertion, bigamy, and a claim for the maintenance of a child born of a bigamous marriage, came before the Magistrates at Belper (England) recently. The principal figure in the case was Dora Lizzie Richardson, an attractive-looking young woman, dressed quietly in black, who appeared to feel the difficult position in which she was placed very keenly. The story told by her solicitor was as follows :—She was, he said, a native of Crich, Derbyshire, and was married at Doncaster in :Bq3 to a man named Richardson. 111-treatment by her husband was followed by a separation and an order was still in force, but Richardson had never paid anything. In 1898 Mrs Richardson saw in a newspaper a paragraph stating that her husband had been killed as the result of a scaffold accident, and accepting the report as correct, she was married, as a widow, to a Derby commission agent named Richard Sayers, at a registry office in Derby, on October 19, 1904. A child was born of that marriage, for which his client now claimed maintenance.

Mrs Richardson, on being sworn, explained that on Saturday last she saw her fust husband at Crowle, Lines, and produced as a witness her brother-in-law, George Pollbill, who also deposed to seeing Richardson, whom be had known for sixteen years, on the same date.

Claimant’s solicitor said there was no doubt that the “dead” man had come to life again.

Clear and ample proof of both marriages was afforded by the production of certificates. The Magistrates held that the second marriage remained valid until set aside, and accordingly made no order for the maintenance of the child. The claimant was told that she ran the risk of being prosecuted for bigamy.