CALCULATED BIGAMY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 887, 3 February 1930, Page 1

CALCULATED BIGAMY

THREE YEARS’ “HARD” FOR HUSBAND INSULTS TO WIFE “The circumstances of your association with this other woman amounts to cold, calculating bigamy, for which there is no excuse, and apart from that you have inflicted a grave and serious injustice on the young woman.” In these terms, Mr. Justice Smith sentenced Owen Barber, a farm labourer aged 45, to three years’ hard labour for bigamy in the Supreme Court this morning. Mr. Noble said prisoner had an excellent character up to the present, and had never been before the court. He had been living unhappily with his wife in Christchurch, and, on coming North, had married another woman under an assumed name. Counsel corrected a statement made in the Lower Court hearing that Barber had contracted the second alliance because the woman was in trouble. That was untrue, he said. The Assistant-Crown Prosecutor, Mr. Hubble, said prisoner’s conduct to his wife in Christchurch was not satisfactory, having failed to maintain her. Likewise, his behavious to his bigamous wife was unsatisfactory. He had quarrelled with her and she had left him.

While here Barber had written insulting letters to his wife in the South, suggesting he was glad to get away and escape his obligations to her. The Judge, said he had been unable to find any extenuating circumstances such as prisoner had pleaded in admitting his offence in the Lower Court. It appeared that the trouble with his wife in Christchurch arose through his association with another woman.