26. A Wedding So Lacking in Love and Romance, it Was Officiated by a Blacksmith
Ellen Turner agreed, so Wakefield took her across the border to Scotland, whose marriage laws were less strict than England’s. There, they were married by a blacksmith. Eventually, Ellen asked to see her father, and Wakefield promised to make it happen, but the meetings always fell through. Eventually, he convinced her that her father had gone to France, and wanted his daughter and her husband to follow him.
In the meantime, Wakefield had written Ellen’s father, informing him of the wedding. He was disappointed in his expectation that Mr. Turner would react as his first wife’s father. Instead, Ellen’s father, who also happened to be High Sheriff of Cheshire, called in favors from the British Foreign Office. The Foreign Office duly sent a lawyer and a policeman to France, where they found Turner and Ellen in a Calais hotel. Ellen was returned to her father, and Wakefield and his brother were eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. The marriage was eventually annulled by Parliament.
