Emma Dash of 10 Broad Street, Brighton, probably thought she would never marry. When she did, at Easter 1885, it resulted in two trials at the Old Bailey.

Some time previously, the 28-year-old had met a gentleman at a ball in London.

She did not think she would see him again and was rather surprised when he suddenly appeared before her and her mother when they were promenading on the Chain Pier.

After introducing himself to Mrs Dash, Captain McDonald, as he styled himself, talked of his seafaring life and confided how, four years earlier, he had been engaged to a lady whose mother had said she was as yet too young to marry. On returning from his last voyage, he found she had married someone else. That experience made him vow to take his wife to sea with him if he ever did get married.

Miss Dash was obviously impressed by his style and sincerity, for that very day she went with McDonald to Lewes, where they dined at the White Hart.

On returning to Brighton, McDonald took a train to London, from where he arranged to meet her two days later. This time they dined in Worthing.

Once back in Brighton from that outing and shortly before returning to the capital, McDonald asked Mrs Dash for her daughter's hand. With some misgiving, in view of the shortness of the couple's acquaintance, she consented.

The wedding took place on Easter Saturday at St James's Church (this once stood at the corner of Chapel Street and St James's Street but was demolished in 1950).

After the wedding breakfast, the young couple went to Chichester, returning to Brighton on Easter Monday.

The "Captain" told his bride he had to leave for his ship to arrange for her to be received on board. He never came back.

What the new Mrs McDonald and her mother did not know was that in 1877 this shameful trickster had married one Elizabeth Williamson in Aberdeen and she was still alive. McDonald would surely have become a serial bigamist had he not been stopped.

After leaving Brighton, he introduced himself to another gullible Emma (surname Dickenson) in St Albans, luring her with an engagement ring.

Some months after the Brighton ceremony, a Mr Osborne, who had been at the wedding breakfast, was at a garden party in Fulham given by the Butchers' Company. There he saw a gentleman dressed as a Highlander, whom he recognised as Captain McDonald.

He tapped him on the shoulder and accused him of being Miss Dash's vanished husband. The Highlander denied it, saying his name was James Malcolm, but he was detained.

Malcolm, a meat salesman at Newgate Market, was given an excellent character and was described as the strictest of tee-totallers.

But the bride from Brighton was summoned and on July 13 promptly identified him as the man to whom she had however briefly been married.

Denying everything, Malcolm said he had never been to Brighton in his life and that he was married to somebody else. Curiously, "McDonald" had told his bride-to-be that his ship was called the Kaikoura.

This was, in fact, the name of a ship which had brought over a consignment of meat from Australia to Malcolm's master a short while before Malcolm went courting in Brighton as McDonald.

When the case came to trial at the Old Bailey, the bride, priest and all the wedding guests swore without hesitation partly from a scar on his face that Malcolm and McDonald were the same person.

Yet Montagu Williams, defending, called a number of witnesses who swore, also without hesitation, that the prisoner was in London on the days when, according to the prosecution, he was courting Miss Dash and getting married in Brighton.

The general defence was that Malcolm must have a double who could honestly be mistaken for him. Williams would write about the case later in his reminiscences, Leaves Of A Life (1890).

Because he was prevented by illness from seeing the case through, a second hearing took place a month later, in October 1885, with a Mr Fillan defending.

The trial was remarkable for the number of witnesses who, in more or less equal proportion, respectively asserted and denied that McDonald and Malcolm were one and the same man.

One important witness was (allegedly) unable to testify due to indisposition.

And a vital piece of evidence which a witness should have produced one of the books from the Victoria Hotel, Brighton, which she formerly ran with her husband was unavailable to the court in the second trial.

Nor was the possibility of witness perjury for pecuniary advantage ruled out in what the judge called "this painful and disgusting case".

Mr Avory, a co-prosecutor, put the whole testimony question into perspective, however, by observing "not a single witness has been produced to show that the prisoner was not the man who was married to Miss Dash". The jury agreed. They took less than half an hour to find James Malcolm guilty.

He was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment the maximum possible for the offence of bigamy.

The Brighton Daily Gazette and Sussex Telegraph resoundingly endorsed this penalty, observing, "smooth tongues and champagne do not always make good husbands. If henceforth this fact is disputed ask Emma Dash".