Unaccountably, though, in an occasional year the oldsters have their fling. For example, was a big year for middle-aged bigamists.
Much the same sporadic outburst applies to women bigamists. Although over the past ten years male bigamists have outnumbered women by more than four to one, in an outbreak of female bigamy cut this ratio down to a mere two to one. Why do men take the initiative in bigamy so much more often than women?
Bigamist who claimed to be secret agent is jailed
According to one psychiatrist who has studied the whole problem, it is partly because women have a greater respect for the sanctity of marriage and the home. Men are free to roam without the prima facie evidence of a former marriage in the shape of children. Why do people commit bigamy, anyway? The question has long fascinated psychiatrists because it represents a conscious decision to take a crucial step in the face of alternatives that apparently would have less painful penalties if discovered. Why not common-law marriage as a solution to the need for illicit togetherness?
In the beginning he may have lied about his marital status and then he becomes so caught up in the web of lies that he is afraid to try to extricate himself. When Dorothy Scanlon bigamously married sixty-cight-year-old Edward Hcwson in Toronto, she explained: He wanted a wife and.
Joseph LaVear, Winnipeg's six-time loser, had two explanations: Seward Garwood, LaVear's cochampion bigamist, told Magistrate Anthony Falzetta at his most recent trial in Sudbury that mother-in-law trouble dogged his footsteps from marriage to marriage and caused his decision to move on. Commented the magistrate drily: Another form of mother-in-law pressure caused one man to commit bigamy. He had left a wife and three children in England when he came to Canada. He continued to support them and planned to bring them out.
Meanwhile he dated another girl who became pregnant. Arrested, he pleaded in court: She said an illegitimate father was better than an illegitimate child. Bigamists in Canada at least those who have been caught never seem to reach the heights of scheming and ingenuity at which the British in particular seem adept.
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Canadian bigamy is almost always a matter of a man or woman marrying and living with one partner at a time without the formality of legally parting with previous spouses. In Captain's Paradise Alec Guinness plays a sea captain who maintains a snug home at each end of his ship's regular run. Perhaps the most ingenious of all bigamists, outdoing any movie plot, was William Leigh, an English truck driver.
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He maintained two homes, two wives and two sets of children only five miles apart in the English countryside. At Chorlton cum Hardy lived Emily, his wife of thirty-three years with their four children. At Ancoats where he went by the name of Spencer lived Elsie, with four children. William managed this blissful arrangement for sixteen long years. He even gave his two sets of four children identical names, so that if he had a lapse of memory he would not arouse suspicion by calling one of his children by an unfamiliar name. Unfortunately, a fifth child was born to the Chorlton cum Hardy family, and that necessitated a fifth name which was not duplicated at the other household.
Sure enough, one day he called a child in his Ancoats family by the name of the fifth child in the Chorlton cum Hardy family. His wife Elsie became suspicious and followed him to wife Emily. They presented each other with marriage certificates and the long honeymoon was over for William.
He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Browse Issues Search Subscribe Now. Click to View Article Pages. When his wife searched through his papers for an insurance policy she found evidence that Fenety had been married before.
BIGAMY: HOW TO SPOT THE MARRYING KIND
He wanted a wife and a home and I wanted to give them to him. More From This Issue. More From This Author. Privacy Policy Terms of Service. To access it, log in here or sign up for your free day trial. Experience anything and everything Maclean's has ever published — over 3, issues and , articles, images and advertisements — since Browse on your own, or explore our curated collections and timely recommendations. Access to this content requires a subscription to the Maclean's Archives. Please log in below: Can't find your account number? Jordan, a naturalised Briton, married his first wife, Julie Cunningham, in , before going on to 'marry' Ms Turner Thomson ten years later.
But not satisified with having relationships with two women Jordan also slept with his real wife's nanny, having two children with her. And in May he then struck up a relationship with yet another woman, Denise King, who was then based in Blackpool. Jordan had set up a recruitment firm, registered in his bigamous wife's name, and he used this to lure Ms King south to Kent with the promise of a better job.
BIGAMY: HOW TO SPOT THE MARRYING KIND | Maclean's | AUGUST 11
At the same time, he began a relationship with her and obtained her credit card details. He asked her to marry him and explained he needed the cash because he had had his hire car and its contents stolen. Ms King gave him the sum on the promise it would be repaid in the next month. Knowing Jordan was going to turn up to collect a car he was having repaired, officers lay in wait at the car dealership on November 11 last year.
Jordan later admitted fraud charges in relation to his use of Ms King's credit card. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to register his address as legally required since his conviction, in , of three indecent assaults on a girl under the age of Peter Coombe, defending, said: He says he is very remorseful. Speaking outside court, Ms Turner Thomson said Jordan was a "very clever predator and a sociopath" who would probably pass off his spell in jail to his real wife as "an undercover mission" to do with his work.