SHE was understandably furious.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she screamed. Whatever the explanation, Lillian Forder ultimately married Arthur Jones, who was described in court as a tortoiseshell worker.

Jones was first married shortly before he went off to the trenches in the First World War. He survived the conflict and returned to his wife who had been staying with her parents in their home town of Birmingham.

Though the union produced a boy and a girl, it was not a happy relationship.

“It was a boy and girl affair,” he subsequently told a judge.

After leaving the army, Jones joined a hospital ship, regularly sending back his wages. But without warning, they dried up and his wife heard no more of him.

Jones, who had secretly moved to Southampton, had found solace with Forder, and moved in with her.

He soon proposed and she accepted but a few days before their marriage, he confessed he was not a bachelor but had a wife and a boy.

“She remonstrated with him that he had not told her before,” said prosecutor Mr Temple Cooke. “But she was still willing to go through a form of marriage and run the risk in order to make him happy.”

The authorities however found out and in 1921 both appeared at Hampshire Assizes. He admitted bigamously marrying the second Mrs Jones and she pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting him.

Clutching her hand, Jones told Mr Justice Darling: “The last two years have been the happiest of my life.”

The judge retorted: “You have made a fine mess of your lives.”

He gave them each 10 days behind bars, which meant their immediate release because of the time spent on remand.