funny marriages

Circumstance: The eldest girl Martha Flowers left for London. She already had an illegitimate girl and very quickly married a Scotsman, a house painter named WINNING. They lived in Soho which even then was a byword for the worst kinds of iniquity. Mr WINNING was supposed to have left for Australia after having one or two children with Martha, but in this case I do wonder whether this was true. Martha had a cab driver with whom she was very familiar, and in 1865 she took him off to Ladbroke Grove near the old racing track and married him. This suited the couple very well indeed as he had the title of her house in Soho, and she had a man with a profitable occupation. His Will states that husband #1 had gone off to Melbourne, but I am concerned that aunty Martha and the cabbie might have simply dumped his carcass into the murky river Thames. "I appoint my wife or reputed wife Martha (to whom I was married as Martha Winning Widow) – and whose former husband James Winning went to Melbourne about twenty years ago and is supposed to be dead, but his death has not been proved – to be sole Executrix of this my will.”
Source of this tale: Will of Thomas Dobinson