PARENTS OBJECTED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 203, 20 April 1932, Page 2

PARENTS OBJECTED

PRETENCE GRETNA MARRIAGE DECLARED VOID IN COURT. WEDDED BY SHOEMAER. LONDON, March 24 In tjie Court of Session at Edin--burgh, Lord Pitman declared null and void a pretended marriage eeremony performed by a shoemaker at Gretna. Plantiff in the case was Kathleen Williams of Rockfoot, Helensburgh, and'defendant Alfred Theodore "Koch, commercial traveller, formerly of Lillybank Gardens, Glasgow. It was stated that the parties were in love with each other, but plaintiff's parents objected. To overcome the opposition plantiff and defendant motored to Gretna and went through a eeremony of marriage, in April, 1929, neither of them intending that it should be a real marriage. They were handed a certificate which professed to certify that they had been married in the manner of the law of • Scotland. The parties returned to their respective homes, and had never lived together as man and wife. They both regarded the eeremony as a means of making their engagment more definite with a view to persuading plantiff's parents to agree. Lord Pitman said he came to the conclusion that plantiff and defendant did not mean what they said at the eeremony. Plantiff would' by now have realised the stupidity of her actions. She played with fire and very nearly got badly burned. If defendant had held her to her statement it was difficult to see how she could have got out of it.