BIGAMY EASY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 762, 7 September 1929, Page 13

BIGAMY EASY

CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND GIRLS’ CARELESSNESS Bigamy is made easy in England, w rites Mr. R. E. Corder in “The Pail v Mail.” mainly because so many women and girls are prepared to take on face value the first presentable man who pays them attentions. The only virtue these easily pleased dupes require from a man is his expressed admire lion o£ their own charms. Such a good judge, they hold, must make a cood husband. In scores of bigamy cases that have come before my notice in the courts ! have been amazed at the way in which casual acquaintance lias been followed by a hasty marriage without any ser ( ous attempt on the part of the “bride” and her parents to investigate the “bridegroom's” own account of him self. The easiest confidence trick played in this country is that of the bigantisi Very different is the method of the man. He always inquires more or less skilfully into the character and pros pects of the girl he is persuading into i a mock marriage. Many of the men bigamists whom I : have seen in the dock have given j themselves up to the police and are | convicted on their own confession. ! Curiously enough, these self-confessed bigamists are usually happy with their ' second “wives.” and they are driven | either from fear of blackmail or through the revival of a suppressed conscience to take the punishment earned by their guilt. When the two women in the i asc appear in court together it is often seen that they are of distinctly different types, physically and temperamentally. The second wife is generally the right choice, and she it is who as a rule stands by the man who has done her such a deep injury. Few of the bigamists I have met have been brutes. Rather have they been of the harmless, inoffensive type, the sort of men born to be mothered —or bullied.

The woman bigamist usually breaks the law from ignorance rather than design. She concludes that If she has not seen her husband for two years she is at liberty to marry again. The professional bigamist, the accomplished man of the world who marries women of substance, borrows money front them to “set up a business,” and then leaves them in rapid succession, is difficult to catch. He selects his dupes with great care and he owes his escape from justice chiefly to the reluctance of his victims to brave a scandal.

But there would be fewer bigamous marriages if women aud girls would choose their husbands as they choose their friends. The girl who accepts a motor ride from a perfect stranger is no more asking for trouble than the girl or woman who permits her vanity to overcome her discretion when a man of whom she knows really nothing asks her to marry him. What is needed to discourage bigamy in England is not so much the system of registration employed in France as the exercise of common sense.