A Woman's Life-long Masquerade.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 215, 15 September 1904, Page 4

A Woman's Life-long Masquerade.

querade. A London correspondent writing on August 6th says : A life-story go. strange that if told in fiction it would have 'bieen derided as impossible was disclosed in a London police court last month. A fra'l looking old man. neatly dress3d, with a Pale, wriiSled face, sad ayes, and grey liair closely cropped, was charged with drunkenness, mid to the astonished officials made a mast remarkable confession. The tired looking little oM "man" was really a wom a n, by name Catherine Coome, aged sixty-«ight. For the' past fifty years she had been leading a man's life in many lands, wearing a man's clothes, and assuming a man's name. She had worked as a captain's clerk and as house painter, had been twico "married" in church to other women, and knocked ah'out the world for the greater part of her life i n masculine guise, and only once before—in a her se-ci-et been discovered. To an Express representative,who bailed out Catherine from Holloway Prison on Tuesday, the old woman told the story of her life. Incidentally, one may reflect upon the multifarious duties of the twentieth century reporter. To bail out the accused person in order to secure an interview strikes me as something new in journalism, but it is a feature which seems to have possibilities before it.

To return, however, to Cathcritio Coome. It was the cruelty of her husband which drove her to run away from him, and sank her Identity by disguising as a boy. For three years and a half she sailed the Mediterranean as a captain's clerk, and then apprenticed herself to a house painter in an English village. The maid of the vicar's wife became her "sweetheart" ! "I hod to have company, somehow or other,"' said Catherine, in telling the story. Four years later s'iie ''married" the girl. "The wadding," she narrates, "took place a t St. Margaret's, Westminster, and we had been happily married for four years when my poor wife died. She liad been ailing before I married her. At Huddersfield I married again, this time a Miss Peters, a dressmaker, whoso parents lived in Jersey. We were married for twenty-two years, and I do not believe a couple were ever so happy as wo were. Incrediblo as it may seem I believe that she never guessed that I was a woman." Later in life Catherine Coome became a decorator on the P. and 0. Company's ships, and made several voyages t 0 Australia in that capacity. Latterly accidents and ill-health have darkened her chequered career, and sent her more than once to the workhouse and infirmary. Such is her amazing story, disclosed after a life-time of masquerade.