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These Times History Took a Turn for the Batty

Khalid Elhassan November 3, 2019 34 min

25. Wakefield Does Jail Time For Fraudulently Marrying a Minor

Edward Gibbon Wakefield told 15-year-old Ellen Turner that her father’s business had collapsed, and that her dad was now a fugitive, on the run from creditors. He then convinced her that his banker uncle had agreed to release some funds that would save her father, but only on condition that she wed Wakefield, and that her father had consented to the marriage.

Ellen agreed, they were married, and Wakefield took her to France. However, Ellen’s father called in favors from the British Foreign Office, who sent a lawyer and a policeman to France, where they found Ellen and Wakefield in a Calais hotel. She was returned to her father, and Wakefield ended up doing three years behind bars. The marriage was eventually annulled by Parliament.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.