The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1895-03-13
Wife of Eight Husbands.

the most remarkable story of "Irene
House." the wife Of eight husbands:
Eight times married, three times
divorced, twice in prison on criminal
charges, twice in an insane asylum
and once defendant in one of the nota-
BILE murder cases Of the last twenty
years; such is the record Of Irene A.
V. Redmond or, as she prefers to call
herself, Irene Carson, now in the
County jail at Trenton fighting against
the efforts of her relatives to send her
back to the asylum from which she
has been twice released. Her marri-
ages, her divorces, her trials and in
generations are but the chapter marks
in the life story of a woman who pos
sessed not only wonderful beauty, in
telligence and brilliancy, but also that
deeper art Of moving and controlling
all men on whom she set her will, and
who lived within the law of her own
desires alone.
Four cities knew her: Trenton,
where she was born and lived the
greater part Of her life; Philadelphia,
to which she went as mere child,
though then wife and mother, living
for few brief weeks life that made
her the very centering point OF all
those undercurrcnts in which gayety
and vice are mingled; Chicago, with
er she drifted in the prime of her
womanhood, there to be seen every
where and known nowhere, the desire
and despair Of all the glided youth Of
that time; and New York, where she
lived with her third husband in a
Broadway Office, and was called the
most beautiful woman downtown.
She made the fortune of one Park row
restaurant, where she and her husband
used always to dine, and where scores
of men used to go merely TO see her.
In this remarkable story there is a
page which has local flavor, one Of
the woman's husbands being no less a
person than Christopher G. Bowen,
who will be recalled as the great king
of the negroes of Charleston in the
days Of Radical rule in this State.
This, according to her own. story, is
the account Of her marriage to Bowen:
The woman's son by her first hus-
band was married at her home in New
Jersey. Among the witnesses at the
wedding was Christopher Bowen, a
Congressman from South Carolina, who
was greatly attracted by the mother
of the bridegroom. All of that even
ing they spent together in converse
tion which eliminated in Congressman
Bowen inviting the beautiful widow to
visit him at his summer home at Sui
livan's Island. She accepted the in
vitation and they went South together.
One evening Judge Cook, local mag
istrate, and the clerk Of the County
Court, G. w. Buttz, came to the Is
land and spent the night. There was
some rallying Of the Congressman on
his infatuation for Mrs. House, and
Judge Cook, turning to her, said:
"Will you take Bowen to be your
lawful husband?"
"Yes, of course I WILL" she return
ed, laughingly, as though considering
the whole matter joke, and so she
still considered itwhen the same ques-
tion was put to the Congressman and
he answered it in the Affirmative. But
he didn't regard it as a joke, and when,
after there had been bloody fight
between some of the negroes on the
place, she became frightened and an
nounced her intention of going back
to New York, he called attention to the
fact that she was his wife.
"Not with any legality" she said,
"but if you want to marry me when
your term in Congress is out come
North and I'll marry you.
So he sent her to New York, took a
house for her and she appears in the
directory Of that date as Mrs. Bowen.
Within a year Congressman Bowen
died. The so-called Mrs. Bowen was
advised that she could obtain wife 8
share in his estate as common law
wife, even if the ceremony at Sulli-
vans Island had no force, but she de-
clined to make any claim. There is
still in Charleston bank, a deposit Of
jewelry and bonds worth $4,000 be.
longing to her, but so tied up in legal
complications that she cannot get it.
So ended her union with Christopher
Bowen and her last chance of social
position. Her other husbands were
all men Of the middle class, all of them
younger than herself.
Here is list Of the eight husbands
of this fin de steele Cleopatra in their
chronological order
1. Charles A. Anderson.
2. j. w. Denver.
3. Orson Alonzo Moore House.
4. Hon. Christopher G. Bowen, NJ.
G..
5. Charles Naylor.
6. Frank Parker.
Z. Paul K. Redmond.
8. Harry Carson.