Extraordinary Marriage Ceremony with dead body in 1881. A few days ago the report of a singular, and we may add melancholy, wedding reached us from Florida, the sum and substance of which is as follows: It would appear from the account furnished us that a Mormon gentleman, named Bradley, left the City of Utah, and after travelling from place to place with samples of his goods he made the acquaintance of a young lady.

Extraordinary Marriage, Mormons in Utah

The acquaintance it would seem ripened into friendship, and finally a still more tender feeling sprang up in the breasts of both Mr Bradley and his fair enslaver. The gentleman proposed and the lady accepted him, although it was known that she was in the last stage of consumption.

Upon reaching Florida arrangements were made for a speedy union, but the bride elect became so weak and prostrate that she could not venture to move out of the house, and there was some idea of having the ceremony performed in her sick chamber, but this was overruled by his parents before it could be solemnised, and the ill fated young woman breathed her last, and now comes the most remarkable, and what has been, with justice, termed the most unpleasant and discreditable part of the tale.

The coffin containing the dead body of the young woman was taken into the church, and several young ladies habited as bridesmaids surrounded it, while the clergyman read the marriage service, and then proceeded with the funeral service.

It was stated that Mr Bradley had given his spiritual wife his solemn promise that her body should not be consigned to its last resting place until this objectionable formula had been gone through.

Missing for Four Months in New York

A man named Colt, living in New York, disappeared on the second of December last, being last seen by the conductor of a car apparently going towards his home. The relatives and his wife made every exertion to find Colt, without the slightest success. The greatest confusion was created amongst the mourners who witnessed the accident, and the widow of the person about to be buried nearly went into hysterics.

About the time her husband disappeared, Mrs. Colt noticed that the outhouse door, which fastened with a spring lock, was shut, and as she had no key, she was unable to open it. The natural grief and anxiety attending the fruitless search for her missing husband, caused Mrs Colt to pay no special heed to the circumstance, and she made no effort to open the door.

Mr Colt still continuing to be missing, his wife and children were finally compelled after an interval of some three weeks, to leave their residence and seek another more suited to their changed circumstances. The second floor which they had occupied was not re-let and still remains untenanted.

On Tuesday, several boys residing in the neighbourhood engaged in a game at ‘hide and seek,’ and one of them in the course of his play peered through a knot-hole in the side of the outhouse already spoken of, and was surprised to see the form of a man therein.
The police were subsequently notified, and broke open the door, and discovered that the man was quite dead and slightly black in the face. It proved to be the missing Colt. The process of decomposition had in some unexplained manner been greatly retarded.