13. The Founder of New Zealand Spent Years in Jail For Kidnapping and Marrying a 15 Year Old
British politician Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796 – 1862) is considered by many to be the founder of New Zealand. Before that, however, he spent years in prison for abducting and marrying a 15 year old heiress. She was Ellen Turner, the only daughter of a wealthy textile manufacturer, and Wakefield wanted her father’s money to bankroll his political career. Realizing that her father would never consent, he sent a carriage to Ellen’s boarding school, with a message that Ellen’s mother was dying, and wished to see her daughter immediately.
She was taken to a hotel, where Wakefield told her that her father’s business had collapsed, and that her dad was now a fugitive, on the run from creditors. He then convinced Ellen that his banker uncle had agreed to release some funds that would save her father, but only on condition that she wed Wakefield, and that her father had consented to the marriage. Ellen agreed, they were married, and Wakefield took her to France. However, Ellen’s father called in favors from the British Foreign Office, who sent a lawyer and a policeman to France, where they found Ellen and Wakefield in a Calais hotel. She was returned to her father, and Wakefield ended up doing three years behind bars. The marriage was eventually annulled by Parliament.