1 WIFE-16 HUSBANDS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 282, 8 June 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

1 WIFE-16 HUSBANDS.

SOME RECORDS OF MUCH-MAR-RIED LADIES. When Mrs. Townsend, of Nebraska, was wearing brief mourning for her fourteenth husband and already had his successor in tow she was asked which of her many consorts she had been happiest with. "Well," she sa'd, after meditating for a time, "I guess number seven was the best of the bunch; but by the time yea have had fourteen husbands you begin to loose track of individuals."

To an acquaintance who remarked that she was lucky to have had <-o many matrimonial experiences, she answered gaily: "Oh I never had any trouble in getting the man I wanted. Any woman can mrry any ma a she take?; a fancy lo if f-he manages right; a-il she needn't wait for leap-year either. But she must go after him artistically, and then he won't i-ave a ghost of a chance." Nor is Mrs. Towns-Bad the on!;, r woman by any means who 1 as found husbands almost as easy to "pluck" as blackberries. Dr. Mary Spencer, of Bourbon, U.S.A., never wore a wedding-ring until she had seen hor twenty-ninth birthday; but die made up so excellently for lost time that within fifteen years she was standing at the altar with number eleven. TWELVE LIVING HUSBANDS. And only a year or so ago, Mrs. Jennie Bigford, of lowa, changed her name for the fourteenth time; and could boast that she had no fewer than twelve divorced husbands living to read her latest nuptials. But these matrimonial feats, remarkable as they are, have been quite eclipsed by Mrs Clemonte Ruiz, of Santa Barbarina, California, who. scon after she emerged from her teens, had worn wedding-rings for thirteen husbands within three years. And never had a lady's "harem" (if the word may be used) been so variegated; for Clemente's temporary lords included a whitehaired Count of sixty, a Baron, the son of a wealthy Philadelphian. a Cincinnati Croesus, an Albany bus-iness-man, a Texas rancher, a jeweller, and a barber, each of whom, within a few weeks or, at the outside, three months, had to give place to a successor to her volatile affections.

Another lady of many matrimonial ventures is Senora Castillo, a beautiful Mexican, who wore widow's weeds for seven departed husbands within fifteen years. The Senora's charms seem, indeed, to have been deadly, for each of her consorts came to an early and tragic end. The first was killed in a carriage accident, the second was accidentally poisoned, the third was killed in a mining accident, the fourth shot himself, a hunting accident accounted for number five; number six fell from a scaffold, and his funeral followed, and number seven was drowned.

A BEAUTIFUL ADVENTURESS. But the most remarkable of all these much-wedded ladies is a beautiful Russian, known to fame as "Golden Hand," who has crowded more Varied matrimony into a few years than any other living -woman.

Sixteen men this adventuress of "extraordinary loveliness and fascination" has lured into her toils; sixteen men have stood by her side at the altar, and, with a charming consistency, she has deserted every ona of them, taking with her as much plunder as she could secure. So irresistable is she that, when once she vas packed off to exile in Siberia, the chief overseer fell head over heels in love, and ran away with her to Constantinople. There she deserted him, as was her pretty way, to find her next victim in the police official who arrested her in Mexico, and who awoke from a brief and blissful honeymoon to find his bird had flown and had taken all his portable valuables with her.