h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nope the charge - remember - was making a false entry on a marriage certificate.

Nothing else.

Wrong age?

No.


Perhaps a nudge is needed.

What's odd about this:

In 1923 a woman marries another woman and signs the marriage register 'Col.Barker.

Why was only Col.Baker arrested?

Well, you did say she wasn't really a Colonel...

Oh, wait. Is it because there *was* only one person? She married herself, to give credibility to both her personas? It'd have to be a marriage-by-proxy or something, though...

No no Barker's wife was real enough.

Check out post 57-61, again.

Because under the law in 1923, a wife was not permitted to give evidence against her husband? Even if the "husband" is a woman?

RF

Nope. Nothing quite so convoluted. Think psychology.

Put it another way - what does habit and custom dictate that newly weds do post haste post nuptials?

the marrige was never consumated in the traditional fasion therefore the marrige was not valid in the eyes of the law

The "colonel" took the rap for both of them?

RF

The marriage was never consumated DGI +1

so therefore what piece of vital information did the wife not have?

the size of the non existant penis

Right I've dropped some fairly large clues and no-ones been getting any closer - so shall I just call it and write up the points?

Wife did not know true identity of 'husband'?

Yes!!

Teaswill +3

Explanation coming right up.

Points after I've had a bath with plenty of bubbles.

Gentle exercise-try gardening -I don't believe a word of it! I ache in places I never knew I had and I've torn and cut flesh from my fingers.

No I wasn't 'doing it wrong!' either.

Born in Jersey in 1889, Lillias Valerie Barker was educated at a convent in Brussels. When at 28 when she met and married Australian, Harold Smith, however she left him after only a year, instead to open and run her teashop in Warminster. There she met another Australian, a soldier, Ernest Pearce Crouch, with whom she had two children a boy and a girl. No further mention is made of her daughter.

By 1923 she was dressing as a man and referring to herself as Captain Victor (or Leslie) Barker. She then proposed to and married Eve Haward, the daughter of a local pharmacist, believing that her son Tony would benefit from having "a woman's influence." On the certificate she gave her married status as 'bachelor' and of course signed it as Cpt. Barker.

The marriage was never consummated - Barker insisting to his wife that his war wounds made such an act impossible.

Barker was promoted in the field (of Lillias' imagination) from Captain to Colonel and awarded himself a Distinguished Service Medal.

In 1925, Barker was arrested at The Regent Palace Hotel on suspicion of bankruptcy. It was during his medical examination at Brixton Prison where Lillias' secret was uncovered.

She appeared - still as Col. Barker - the next day in court at the Old Bailey to face the charge of entering false entry onto a marriage certificate in marrying Eve, for which she received 9 months detention by a judge whose habit was to lecture defendants on the vile perniciousness of their transgressions and perversions before retiring to his chambers to read some of his (unpublished) poetry to the luckless defence counsel or Prosecutor who had just lost the case.

After re-emerging into society, Lillias as Col. Barker toured the country as a stage act, but was hauled before that courts again when police raided the NFP's offices and discovered the gun allegedly belonging to the Colonel for which he did not posses a licence - though in court he appeared with a bandage across his face and pretended to be blind - another of his viscous "war-wounds."

Col. Barker is by now too notorious to persist, so being something of a dab hand at reinvention, in 1937 Lillias evades the tabloid press and becomes John Hill, where she takes up lodgings with an actress, while working as a butler and 'manservant' to the Mayfair Set. A job by the way in which she excels but which ends acrimoniously with the suspicion of theft of £5 from his employers who nevertheless noted his perfect work record.

During World War 2, John transforms into Geoffrey and moves to Suffolk with his wife Eve. Where in anonymity he served with The Home Guard. His son Tony is now a grown man and serves abroad where tragically he is killed. He dies never knowing that his father was, in fact, his mother. It can be surmised that given the lack of physical intimacy and Lillias's strange triple-life, that Eve also never knew her husband's real identity either.

Lillias, The Colonel, Ian and Geoffrey all died in 1960. Her secret was then revealed in the newspapers to the astonishment of the Suffolk villagers, with the sole exception of the local vicar 'who had always suspected.'

Quite remarkable, and thanks for your time and efforts here. Hope you heal well soon, Clive.

Thanks Julzes.

I am cleansed and fragrant and healing well.

Right I'll get doing points then shall I?