Wife’s Alleged “Marriage” While He Was In France – Surprise for a Husband.

November 1919

Yorkshire Evening Post – Thursday 20 November 1919

Surprise for a Husband.

Wife’s Alleged “Marriage” While He Was In France.

Florence Welton, Denaby, was charged at Doncaster today with bigamy.

John Welton the husband, said he met her Rotherham when he was a private in the 5th West Yorkshire Regiment. They were married August 2S. 1915, at the Registry Office, Rotherham. He afterwards served for three years in Egypt and Palestine. They corresponded regularly during that time, and on being demobilised March last and his wife lived together for time Sheffield.

He then re-enlisted in a labour Corps, and was sent to France. His wife wrote letters to him to August 11 this year, when the correspondence ceased. In October he came home on leave and found that his wife was not at home. Two days later she came and said she could not stop with him because she nursing an invalid gentleman

Matthew Carr, miner, of Denaby, said met the prisoner in the spring of this year. She told him that she was a war widow, and that her husband had been killed in 1915. He went through form of marriage in September at the Roman Catholic Church, Denaby.

Prisoner was committed for trial at the Leeds Assises.