Wedding delayed after pair’s ‘prank’

A young bride missed her appointed wedding date after her husband-to-be’s premarriage celebrations got out of hand.

Seventeen-year-old Betty France from St Ninians had been due to wed at Stirling Registrar’s Office on a Saturday morning in May 1959 but the ceremony was postponed when groom Samuel Murphy, a 21-year-old unemployed labourer from Raploch, and his best man found themselves in trouble with the law.

And on the following Monday, Miss France was to be found on the public benches at Stirling Sheriff Court – `nervously twisting her handkerchief ’ – and waiting for the appearance in the dock of Mr Murphy and best man Alexander Forbes, 19, also from Raploch.

She was relieved when Mr Murphy walked away with a fine, rather than a prison sentence, and the pair went straight from court to the Registrar’s Office where they were wed. Mr Murphy was fined £10 for maliciously breaking a handrail in a bus shelter, damaging a designation plate on a bus stop and stealing a motor cycle and using it without insurance.

Mr Forbes admitted similar charges, apart from the one of using the motor bike without insurance, and was fined £8.

The accused’s lawyer, Mr W Clark, urged Honorary Sheriff-substitute AW Bain to take a lenient view as no serious damage had been done. Neither accused had much re-collection of what happened on the night before the wedding but said they took the motor bike for a `lark’ and were returning it when caught by police.

Miss France had been due to marry in a special wedding outfit of a pink two-piece suit but was wearing a `check coat with no hat or no flower’ when she and Mr Murphy finally tied the knot.

The bridesmaid, Miss Margaret Simpson, 17, St Ninians, accompanied Miss France to court and both she and Mr Forbes were with the couple when they exchanged vows. When the happy couple emerged from the Registrar’s Office Miss France showed newspapermen and photographers `that all-important wedding ring’.