ELOPED WITH A CROOK

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 10

ELOPED WITH A CROOK

FOLLY OF INFATUATED WOMAN RECORD OF HER LOVER One of the most remarkable examples of the folly and credulity of womankind when under the influence of a bliud infatuation was afforded in a London police court. Falling under the sway of a man with a criminal record, whom she at first believed to be a bachelor, the wife of a seafarer made a pretext to leat e home and elope with her lover. Even the revelation that her dubious wooer was married failed to destrov her illusion that he was a man of blameless character, and she even contemplated getting a divorce aud marrying him. Worse than that, she became associated with him in the highly suspicious enterprise of obtaining situations iu domestic service by means of a forged reference. To the end the rogue who had led her on such dangerous paths kept up the pretence that she was his wife. He was fined for his malpractices, and liis dupe was bound over to come up for judgment if called upon. It was adventures after they had left Y'armouth, which led to the appearance before the Marylebone magistrate, of Samuel David Nicholls. 40, chauffeur and parlourman and a woman he called his wife, who was stated by the police to be Emmeline Lilian Reid, the wife of David Reid, employed in a lightship off Yarmouth. They were charged on a warrant with offering themselves as servants to the wife of a company director, of Marble Arch, with a false certificate of character, bearing the name of Robert Baker, of Finsbury Park Road. Detective-Sergeant Bowden told the magistrate that Nicholls, who was married with three children, had been previously convicted for offences at Peterborough, Greenwich, Oundle, Norwich, Westminster, Sussex, Brighton and Southend, one of his offences being making a false oath to procure a marriage. In August last, while he was living at Yarmouth, he obtained, through the influence of his wife, a situation with a firm of carriers in London at £4 a week. About the same time the female prisoner obtained the consent of her husband to come to London to find work, her real object being to join Nicholls. The officer alleged that the two came up to London together—a statement denied by the man—and that after the man had been discharged by the firm of carriers for inefficiency, the two entered the service of several people with a forged reference. Ultimately they were engaged by a woman who wanted a trustworthy couple to take charge of her residence at Newbury, Berkshire. They were, in fact, sent down to Berkshire to put the house in order, and when it was discovered that the reference was false they were arrested. The magistrate asked how the woman came to be mixed up with Nicholls. “First of all she knew him as a single man,” replied Sergeant Bowden, “and he posed as such when they went away together, but she discov ered later that he was married I think she thinks that he is a good and innocent man. In fact, she seems infatuated with him, and I think she is going to get a divorce and marry him.” The magistrate, having read a statement put in by the man, observed that he continually referred to the woman as his wife. It was just like his impertinence to keep up the fraud to the very end. “This is a very dangerous offence,” continued the magistrate, "and having got into these country houses with a false reference they would have the run of them and could do as they liked.” He fined the maD £lO or two months’ imprisonment, and bound the woman over to come up for judgment if called upon. Nicholls’s wife, who lives at Clarendon Street, Victoria, was present in court, and on a summons for desertion she obtained a nominal order against him for t>d a week, with the custody of her three children who are now in charity homes.