The Monckton-Lynch Case

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 179, 10 July 1884, Page 2

The Monckton-Lynch Case

WELL MERITED SENTENCE. [Per United Press Association.] Wellington, July 9. Charles Henry Monckton, who wits found guilty of making a false representation under the Marriage Act, was brought up for sentence. His Honor said : “ Prisoner, the scandal which your trial has exposed to view is one which must make even a hardened profligate blush to have occasioned it. At the present moment you are justly an object of contempt and disgust. The act of which you have been found guilty may, in some cases, be almost a venial offence, but you stand convicted of having made a lying declaration to advance a vile purpose. I call it a vile purpose because the marriage was under circumstances nothing else than a disgusting kind of prostitution. Intitution of marriage is the corner stone of society. You have vilified and degraded it in a way almost unheard of, and I feel bound, by severe punishment, to vindicate the laws which protect it. The sentence is that you be kept to imprisonment with hard labor for the period of two years. Alice Lynch, who pleaded guilty to a similar offence, was further remanded for sentence uniil to-morrow, his Honor taking time to consider some remarks made by the accused’s counsel in her favor. July 10th. At the Supreme Court this morning, Annie Lynch, on a charge of making a false representation under the Marriage Act, was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment.