SWANSEA MAN’S ROMANCE AND RUIN — BIGAMY CASE BEFORE THE ASSIZES

South Wales Daily Post

One of the first cases listed for hearing at the Glamorgan Assizes in July 1936 — as published in the South Wales Daily Post — concerned a sensational post‑war romance that ended in the dock at Swansea. Before Mr. Justice Du Parcq stood John Aubrey Phillips, aged forty, a checker employed at the Swansea docks, who pleaded guilty to bigamy. While his lawful wife, Ada Maud Phillips, was still alive, he had gone through a form of marriage with Rose Gwendoline Morris at Cardiff on August 31.

Miss May Williams appeared for the prosecution, outlining Phillips’s background: a man of respectable Swansea parentage, educated at Swansea Grammar School, later serving with distinction in the R.A.S.C. and the Welch Regiment during the war. After demobilisation he worked at the Office of Works in Whitehall, where he met and married his wife. Restless in peacetime, he became a commercial traveller and eventually returned to Swansea, where he encountered Miss Morris, a barmaid, and lived with her briefly after their unlawful marriage.

BACK WITH HIS WIFE — JUDGE’S SEVERE WARNING

When the court resumed, Detective Bishop informed the judge that Phillips had a previous conviction for a minor offence and was now living once more with his lawful wife. Miss Morris, the judge was told, was a respectable young woman, drawn into the affair without malice.

Mr. Justice Du Parcq delivered his judgment with measured gravity. Bigamy, he declared, is always a serious offence, and doubly so when committed at the expense of a young woman whose trust has been misused. Phillips was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment, the court emphasising both the moral weight of the offence and the need to uphold the sanctity of marriage.