Alicia Edith Southall, War Bride Fraudster – California, 1945

FULL TEXT: Hayward, Dec. 24. – Mrs. Alicia Edith Southall, 18, of 9533 A Street, was held in the Alameda County jail today for investigation of bigamy and fraudulently cashing a serviceman’s allotment checks after she admitted, according to deputy sheriffs, she had married a Marine while she still was wed to a sailor.

The alleged double marriage was discovered Saturday night after Highway Patrolmen Tony Enos and Ernest Patrolmen Tony Enos and Ernst Schoening went to the aid of Mrs. Southall as she ran barefoot down A Street near Castro, shouting for help.

Chasing her, the officers said, was Marine Pvt. Richard B. Houston, 20. The girl said he had threatened to beat her.

Under questioning, Enos and Schoening reported, she admitted that she had been married at Treauure Island on May 9, 1944, to Thomas Southall, 23, a Navy gunners mate. Without divorcing him, she admitted further, the officers said, that she had received Goverrnment allotment checks from Southall at the home of her mother, Mrs. Alicia H. Lema, 7857 Plymoth Street, Oakland.

Mrs. Southall was taken to the county jail in Oakland and booked en route to the U. S. Marshal.

[“Girl Held in Allotment Case,” Oakland Tribune (Ca.), Dec. 24, 1945, p. 11]

***

For more cases of this type see: “War-Marriage Vampires”& “Allotment Annies"

***