Beware of Nice Blonde Women

A newly-wed husband was recently informed that he is a bigamist.

The revelation came after the unnamed 67-year-old wed his long-term Hawaiian girlfriend and applied to move from Sydney, Australia, back to her birthplace.

American immigration officials scanned his records and contacted the couple to inform them that he was already married.

They produced a marriage certificate showing that he had tied the knot with an American women in Arizona in 1978.

The shame-faced groom confessed he had been on a 28-day drinking binge there while on leave from his job on an oil rig, but insisted he only vaguely remembered "a nice blonde woman". [Link]

She Sure Knows How to Pick 'em

24-year-old Alison Smith wed for the fourth time on Friday.

It was the latest in a bizarre series of marriages for the young mum.

Alison's ex-husbands include a man who eloped with her own mum, a bigamist and a pal who stood in for her fiance when he jilted her the night before the wedding.

Alison was reportedly "delighted" when asked to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of her mother and ex-husband.

But Pat and George's wedding was called off after officials discovered the groom was marrying his mother-in-law, which is against the law.

Staff from Arbroath register office stepped in at the last minute, citing the Marriage Scotland Act 1977, which states that you cannot marry a former spouse's mother unless your former spouse is dead. [Link]

Army Poster Boy Was a Deserter

Marcel Caux died in 2004 at age 105. He was given a state funeral as one of Australia's last five World War I veterans, and an army recruitment poster bearing his image recently won a competition. But soon after his death, historians discovered that he was a deserter and a bigamist.

Ms [Lynette] Silver and Ms [Di] Elliott discovered that records issued in the name of Marcel Caux described the war service of Harold Katte, who was born in 1899 in Marrickville, although some records say Hurstville. Ms Silver points out that he had five names, five signatures, three nationalities, three places of birth, three dates of birth, three mothers, three fathers and two wives, simultaneously.

Though injured three times in battle, Katte's service was not wholly exemplary.

He had gone absent without leave for seven days in July 1917, for which he served 14 days in close confinement. He went AWL again in June 1918, when French authorities arrested him in the port of Brest, where he was said to be posing as a Frenchman. [Link]

Australia placed 376,000 World War I service records online this week, so you can search for the two-timing Aussie deserters in your own family tree.

Wife Swap

Australian genealogist Kate Wingrove has organized a reunion of the descendants of George Cribb: "convict, bigamist and general scoundrel."

Within six months of arriving in the colony as a convict in 1808 Cribb was advertising "fine fresh pork" to his neighbours in The Rocks. He was also living with another convict, Fanny Barnett, whom he married in 1811 - conveniently forgetting that he was already married to a woman in England called Mary.

Cribb was caught out when Mary wrote to say she was arriving in Sydney in June 1815. The butcher - by now prosperous - paid Fanny 300 pounds to leave for England on the same ship that deposited Mary. [Link]

Late for His Own Wives' Weddings

From the Salt Lake Tribune of Sept. 28, 1895:

MATRIMONIAL COMPLICATIONS
Kentucky Man the Uncle of His Own Child.

Vanceburg, Ky., Sept. 27.—William Sargent, a young man of this place, find himself in the peculiar position of being a bigamist, a brother-in-law to his own wife, and uncle to his child, which will, when big enough, call him father. And, to make his burden still harder to bear, Mrs. Kate Evans, an estimable widow of Vanceburg, is twice his mother-in-law.

A few years ago Sargent married Rose Evans and lived with her a few months. Then he went West to seek his fortune. After two years the report came that he was dead, and his wife discarded her weeds a year later and married again. Sargent suddenly turned up in his old home. There was no divorce, but an agreement was entered into by which husband No. 2 was to have possession of the wife, while Sargent wooed and won Mary, his wife's younger sister. A few weeks after the second marriage, the roving young man again left for parts unknown. A year ago the report came to Vanceburg that he had been killed in Cuba, and wife No. 2 married Charles Simpler, to whom she bore a son.

Thursday Mary and Rose, while sitting on the porch of the home they jointly occupied, were astonished to see Sargent coming up the road. Another agreement was proposed, but Sargent refused to entertain it, saying he was going to stay at home this time, and wanted his wife Mary, with the child. Simpler had other alternatives, but chose the simpler way out of the perplexing difficulty. He packed his baggage, kissed his wife good-bye and left for Ohio.

Sargent is now in full possession of the house, but does not seem to know just where he is at, and it will take considerable calculating of genealogical and domestic problems to set him exactly right. [Link]

Nice Try, Wrong Religion

From Kenilworth (U.K.) Today of Nov. 23, 2005:

Man cleared of bigamy in Kenilworth

[snip]

[Michael] Huntington (56) of Pegasus House, Welbeck Road, Bolsover, Chesterfield, had pleaded not guilty at Warwick Crown Court in June to bigamously marrying Linda Branagh.

During an earlier hearing the court heard it was alleged that Huntington had gone through 'a form of marriage' to Ms Branagh in May 2003 while still married.

But Huntington said that before the marriage he had divorced his previous wife, with whom he was living abroad, by telling her 'I divorce you' three times at the airport before he returned to the UK - although they were both described as Christians on the marriage certificate.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

By a Sunni Islamic procedure called a triple talaq, a husband can divorce his wife by saying "Talaq, talaq, talaq" ("I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you"). If you're not a Sunni Muslim, you'd better have a good lawyer on speed dial before attempting this.