FULL TEXT: Nineteen-year-old Rachel Rivers Bell was given a
three-year sentence by Judge Sidney Mize in Federal Court yesterday on seven
counts of violations of the Servicemen’s Dependency Allotment Act.
The attractive little brunette plead guilty to marrying
three servicemen without obtaining a divorce from any of them. At one period
Rachel Bell was receiving monthly allotment checks for $50 from, two ‘husbands’
at the same time.
In 1941 she married her first husband Albert Schmittou Jr.
of Memphis from whom she is now divorced. In September, 1942 she is now
divorced. In September, 1942 she was married to Pvt. Clayton W. Spence at
Leesville, La. And in December, 1943 at Brandon she married Oscar W. Nettles of
Jackson.
When Rachel Rivers Bell was arrested shortly before Federal
Court began session here it was found that there had been a petition fort
divorce from Schmittou filed some time ago but no action was taken on it until
last month.
She received some of the $50 allotment checks at Clinton
where her grandparents live and some at Biloxi. Her mother is a resident of
Memphis.
During the time Rachel Bell was receiving checks from
several husbands she was arrested by the local police department a number of
times for vagrancy and for the Health Department.
A similar case of a white woman receiving dependency
allotments from various ‘husbands’ is expected to come before this term of the
Federal Court, Aline Smith is under bond to appear before this U. S. district
court on like charge.
[“Teenager Sentenced On Allotment Fraud; Clinton Girl Gets
Year-Per-Husband,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), May 10, 1944, p. 2]
For more cases of this type see: “War-Marriage Vampires”& “Allotment Annies"
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