YOUNG COUPLE’S TALES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1727, 19 June 1917, Page 4

YOUNG COUPLE’S TALES.

BRAVERY AT SEA, LEGACY, AND MARRIAGE. A tall young man, aged 21, who had given his name as Charles James Jepson, was remanded at Bow Street, Loudon, on charges of unlawfully wearing the uniform of a lieutenant-commander Royal Naval Reserve, and representiing himself as entitled to wear the D.S.O. medal and ribbon. He pleaded guilty, and said his real name was W ilkes. Mr Ford, manager, Howard Hotel, Strand, said the accused had stayed there and had worn officer’s uniform of the R.N.R, He was accompanied by a young woman as his wife. On March 29th his bill had run up to £2O, and when asked to pay, he said his father and mother had left him property and he was entitled to £3OO a year until twelve months after his marriage. Asked how he got the D.S.O. decoration he was wearing, the accused told Mr Ford it was for his services in a mine-sweeper attacked in the Irish Sea by a submarine; that the commander and second officer of the mine-sweeper were shot, and he had to take command and brought the vessel into port. The accused told Mr Ford he was born in Auckland, New Zealand. Grade Henri, aged 21, pleaded guilty to having given a false name for registration at the Howard Hotel, and was remanded. Detective-Sergeant Collins, who arrested her at Margate, said he asked her in the presence of her aunt if she was the wife of the young man who had stayed at the Howard Hotel in the name of Jepson, and she replied that their marriage had taken place at St. Paul’s Church, Stoke Newington, on March 7th. Afterwards she confessed that the story of the marriage was not true. She had been a nurse.