A GLASGOW ENOCH ARDEN CASE.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 96, 2 August 1879, Page 3

A GLASGOW ENOCH ARDEN CASE.

Rather a peculiar case, somewhat of the Enoch Allien nature, lias just come under notice in the Glasgow Sheriff Court. The notice was raised under the multiplepoindiug category, in which the sum of £O2 was at stake, hut the facts brought out in connection with the matter are interesting. The parties in the •case were Henry Wright and Agues Burnside Sharp, who were married on •Nth December, 1854, both having been previously married. They lived together us husband and wife till 1875, when the •woman left Wright's house in consequence of quarrels and llUfoeling, which at that time existed between them. In Feb. 1«74 a meeting took place in their house, at which a sum at' £o'2 was paid by the mutual consent of the parties, and pi iced in the hands of the nominal raisers, Claud Hamilton and John Stewart, to be retained by them for Mrs. Wright's behoof, and paid to hor at Wright's death. This sum is the fund in dispute in the present miiltiph-poinding which has been raised by the claimant Wright. He desires to have the money paid over to hint on the ground that his marriage with Mrs. Hamilton in 1854 was null, : n respect that her husband James Millar, was then and still is alive. Mrs. Millar was married in 1831, to James Millar, wliu loft her in „ March, 1841, enlisted, and was sent to India. She

had, according to her own account, two letters from him in 1544 and 1545, aftorwhich, she says, she heard no more from him, except that bis uncle had got a letter from a missionary stating that he was just dying. "I ulid not think," she says, " afier that, it hat there was any use making any inquiry about him, and I did not do it." Nor docs it appear that anything was beard of Millar until after tho jiarties had ceased to live together in 1875, when Wright made some inquiries which Jed him to the conclusion that Millar is still living, and in the lapso of IU years had been educated from a raw recruit to an officer in the Queen's service. All the considerations the Sheriff says, leave no d mbi in his mind, in dealing with this ; i st i in, as a jury question, that :■.:::..- Millar, who has married to \gnes- Burnside in 1838, wa-s alive in h- went tnrough the form of

marriage with Wright, in 1854, and probably pt ill lives. The marriage being thus null, tho £(>2 would be a provision made for the wife under essential errors, and would fall to bo restored to tho claimant Wright, if it had been furnished out of his funds, but it is tolerably clear that it was not so. It is admitted that Mrs. Millar carried on business on her own account as a money-lender in a small way, and had also a small drapery business both lieforc and after her connection with Wright, who was a journeyman tailor with wages of 2+s a-'weck and a family, and it is not alleged that he had means till 1574, when there was nbout £125 in the bank, and it appears that they divided it equally. I take it thoreforo, that a fair and right division was then made by the parties themselves, and as there was no marriage there is no reason why the trust should be longer mainted.