HE HAD enjoyed a variable career, once serving a police officer with the Hampshire force.

Before that, he had been a soldier and railway worker. But now in 1874 Walter Cullen described himself as a jobless labourer as he stood in the dock at Hampshire Assizes accused of bigamy.

The fact that he was shopped by his cousin said much about the central characters’ morals.

Cabbie Stephen Cullen confirmed he had married his sister some 13 years earlier but jurors quickly knew the relationship was far from made in heaven.

The couple lived in barracks in Portsmouth for 11 months before he was transferred overseas. However, unhappy he may have felt, it met with the total approval of his wife, Martha, because she had been having an affair.

No sooner had he gone to do his duty for queen and country then the other man moved in!

The first he knew of her infidelity came when he unexpectedly returned home and discovered he had been supplanted. She went on to have two children by him.

Eight years then passed before the jilted Cullen met his second wife, Ann Edney, who was living in the Havant Union. She went through the marriage at a church in Portsea, believing he was a single man.

They had three children together before Cullen suddenly walked out on her after confessing he was still married to his first wife. He regularly sent her money to help look after the children.

Cullen evidently realised his folly and begged her to live with him at his barracks. But there is nothing like a woman scorned and instead of re-igniting their relationship, she reported him to the police!

So Cullen appeared at the Assizes charged with bigamy, perversely claiming that he thought his wife was dead when he married Edney and that he received a letter from her friends to that end.

Though they convicted him, jurors sympathised with Cullen as being somewhat of a wronged man and pleaded with the judge, Mr Justice Quain, pictured left, to exercise mercy, which he plainly did.

“I regret to see a man with 21 years good character and pension in this sad situation. Your wife’s conduct has palliated your conduct, you have forfeited your pension, and in the circumstances, you will be imprisoned for 12 months.”