The 75th anniversary of VJ Day was last Sunday and to commemorate it a colleague and I had been in the early stages of planning a 'War Walk' of Honiton before lockdown scuppered it. So in lieu of our historic constitutional, here is one of the lighter wartime stories that would have been included.

Today a barbers and not so long ago, Honiton Video Film, but in 1942 this shop was a tobacconists run by a Maud Furzey.

The business had been started by her husband, George, and after 25 years of marriage George passed away in 1936. Continuing the business alone, Maud (then 50), in the summer of 1941, became friendly with a soldier posted at the former Heathfield Army Base.

The soldier wooed Mrs Furzey telling her his wife had died some years before, and it wasn't long before the couple started courting. Shortly after that, the 47-year-old private, Stephen Streener, asked for her hand in marriage.

At first she resisted, but he persisted, and after discussing it with her family she finally agreed and the couple were wed at St Paul's Church on Feb 8 1942.

After only a month of marriage her newly-wed stated he had to go into hospital in the capital, following on from some X-ray results and promptly disappeared.

As weeks passed she made enquiries and found he had never even been registered with the hospital in London however, after nine months, in early December 1942, Mr Streener returned to the town with a big confession.

Stephen Streener was indeed a widower, but only to his first wife, who had died in 1919, however he had neglected to mention that he had re-married in 1921 and this second wife, with whom he'd had 15 children, was still alive and living in Northumberland!

He was arrested and on 4 December 1942 was committed for trial on the charge of bigamy; later being sentenced to four months in prison. His defence; that he had been drunk, and did not realise he had married Mrs Furzey, until three days later did not wash with the judge.

Mr Streener must have liked the free bed and board of the penal system for after being released, and returning to his lawful wife, less than a year later, in 1944, he was fined £1 for allowing his children to play truant.

In the December he was sent to prison for a second time when a charge was brought against him by the NSPCC, for the much more serious crime of child neglect.

On hearing his offspring were riddled with fleas and head lice and were being fed by neighbours the judge described him as "a disgrace to fatherhood". The stunt he'd pulled in Honiton was also brought up, and did not help his case for he was sent back to prison for another six months.

You'd think after three stints in prison Mr Streener may have turned over a new leaf but this was not the case. Just five days before the war was officially declared over Mr Streener was caught by the long arm of the law, again!

This time he stole a bike from a colliery worth £5 and subsequently spent VJ Day at His Majesty's Pleasure.

Maud Furzey later remarried a legitimate widower in 1947 and moved to Surrey where it is thought she lived a quiet life until her death in 1961.