TOO MUCH MARRIED.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 220, 17 September 1887, Page 1

TOO MUCH MARRIED.

A singular double case of bigamy is reported from Sandhurst, Victoria, showing how lightly persons enter into second marriages. In the year 1873 a young man eighteen years of age, named William Tender, a resident of Sandhurst, became acquainted with a young woman named ILirrictte Bell, a native of Sandhurst, and three year 1 * his senior. The acquaintance led to their marriage, and they lived together happily with their one child for some time, but eventually domestic troubles led to their .separation, the wife and child leaving Sandhurst. Fender formed an acquaintance vith another young woman named Catherine Mary Purtell, twenty-two years of age, and was married to her at St. Killans, by the Rev. Father O'Connell, on the 18th December, 1884, under the name of William Thomas Fender. Again this pair lived happily for some years, and two children were born. Domestic troubles again arose, though in what way is unknown, and Fender was arrested at his residence by detectives on a charge of bigamy. Thus ends the first act in this drama in humble life. The fortunes of the first wife had to be traced out, and Detective Mahoney engaged in that work with such success that he discovered her to be living at East Brunswick, married to a quarryman named McGinnifc, by whom she had two children, the child by the iirst husband also living vwth her. A search in the RegistrarGeneral's office showed that her second marriage was celebrated by the Rev. A. McVean on June 2, 1884, being some time before the second matrimonial alliance of her iirst husband. Detective Mahoney laid an information against her for bigamy, and she was arrested. Thus a second home was broken up. Fender, on being arrested, expressed an opinion that it was a pity, when ho and hi.s first wife were satisfied in their new relations, that they should have been disturbed by the authorities.