Hotel Clerk Charged as Bigamist

1903

HOTEL CLERK IS A BIGAMIST

Boy Cook Arrested for Having One Wife Too Many.

Marshalltown, March 2.—A young man named Roy Cook, formerly night cleric at the Pilgrim hotel here, was arrested on the charge of bigamy. The charge was preferred by a woman who claims to be his first wife and who is now living in Sioux City. She claims she was married to Cook in Sioux City in May, 1901. He acknowledges the truth of the claim, but says he has not lived with the woman for some time and that he believed when he married his second wife that he had been legally divorced.

The second wife of Cook was a young widow named Clara Thompson, She is a daughter of John Swift of this city. She was a clerk at the cigar stand in the Pilgrim hotel when Cook met her and they have been married since Oct. 27, 1902. She declared her faith in her husband this afternoon, after he was arrested and said she was sure he had not done wrong in marrying her, that he fully believed he had been divorced from the first wife.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 3, 1903, page 2.