CORNISH ELOPEMENT CASE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1053, 25 March 1882, Page 2

CORNISH ELOPEMENT CASE.

The Cornish county magistrate living near St Columb, whose daughter eloped to the Cape with his coachman last week, has abandoned the idea of telegraphing to Madeira for the man’s arrest on a charge of deserting his wife and family, as such an offence is not provided for by the extradition laws. Apart from the painful character of the case, there is a strong romantic interest attaching to the young lady. She belongs to a family, which has already produced several members, both male and female, of strikingly eccentric habits. One of her male cousins recently died suddenly of heart disease, at Heleton, at the age of forty, whose career had been one of a very romantic nature. The son of a Cornish rector, he left home at twenty years of age, and went to America, where after persuading a young lady to become his wife, he fought in the American war on the side of the South, but forgot to return to his young wife. For years he led a strange life in the far West, and then unexpectedly returned to his father’s rectory, near St. Columb. Here he became acquainted with a young lady who had recently come into the neighbourhood and who passed as the ward of a gentleman of middle age, although it afterwards turned out that she had eloped with her so-called guardian. Whether the young gentleman knew the true state of affairs or not, he married the “ ward in Chancery,” much against his father’s wishes, aud went to Australia with his wife and her “ guardian.” Very little was known of his subsequent career until he returned to England the other day without his wife, and shortly afterwards death put an end to his eccentricities. His sisters, female cousins to the young lady who has just gone off with her father’s groom, were also remarkable for their singular behaviour, and one of them left homo and married a common sailor.