THE CAREER OF A CURATE.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1115, 21 November 1883, Page 2

THE CAREER OF A CURATE.

At Birmingham, a few weeks ago, Thomas Morris Hughes, clerk in holy orders, until recently curate at Bickcnhill, near Birmingham, was charged, on remand, with having committed bigamy. The prisoner, it is alleged, was married first to a widow of means, at Shrewsbury in 1860, and she accompanied him to Llandaniel, Anglesey, of which place he became the curate. He there gave Way to drink, and was at length imprisoned for three months for violent assaults. In 1875, he was sentenced by Lord Coleridge, at the Beaumaris assizes, to five years’ penal servitude for supplying false information, upon which a register of death was filled up, his object being to hide the fact that he seduced- his step-daughter, and that she had had a child, which died when only a few weeks old. Wh en released from prison Hughes came with his wife to Birmingham, and he is alleged' from that period to have lived a life of drunkenness and debauchery. It has been discovered that while curate at Harlaston, in Staffordshire, lie went through a mock marriage with a young governess, with whom he afterwards lived in apartments in Birmingham, and by whom he had two children. She ultimately left him and went to America, where she died in giving birth to another child. Ho next induced a young woman, named Mary Ann Morgan, the daughter

of a carpenter, to marry him, and the ceremony was performed by special license. In November last ho became curate of • Bickcnhill, and absconded in the following July, in company with the vicar’s cook, with whom lie was living when apprehended. The woman with whom he went through the last bigamous marriage is now an imbecile, and is about to bo removed to an asylum. The prisoner, who stated that he was guilty of the charges, was remanded. The Birmingham correspondent of the Central News telegraphs: Further enquiries in connection with the notorious clerical bigamy case have .brought to light another mysterious ninniagc and disappearance of the husband. In April, 1875, a man, dressed as a clergyman, giving the name of Peter Blair, took lodgings in Bishop street, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, and was occupied in religions work. On the 28ih of June he married a young girl at St Jude's Church. Within a few days he began to ill-treat her ; got possession of and pledged her watch and other articles ; and one morefrig, within a fortnight after «ho marriage, he left her, remarking laughingly that ho supposed he should have to treat her as ho had done his other thirteen wives. The poor woman thought ho was joking, but ho never returned, and she went back to her relatives. The police arc endeavouring to nsccrtiiin whether Biair is identical with the Rev. Thomas Hughes/the Birmingham bigamist.