Chap. 280.—An ACT to amend an act approved March 20, 1920, entitled an act
for the protection of patients and inmates of State hospitals and colonies for
the insane, epileptic and feeble-minded from improper and unlawful mar-
riages and providing punishment for violation of this act. [H B 119]

Approved March 17, 1922.

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That an
act approved March twentieth, nineteen hundred and twenty, entitled
an act for the protection of patients and inmates of State hospitals
and colonies for the insane, epileptic and feeble-minded from improper
and unlawful marriages and providing punishment for violation of
this act, shall be amended and re-enacted to read as follows:

That if any man or woman shall knowingly marry any person
lawfully adjudged to be insane, epileptic or feeble-minded, and duly
admitted as a patient or inmate in any State hospital or colony for
the insane, epileptic or feeble-minded, whether such person be actually
confined in a hospital or colony or in the custody of some person
on bond or furlough or at large as an escaped patient or inmate, he
or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof
shall be confined in jail not exceeding six months or fined not ex-
ceeding five hundred dollars, or both. Any such marriage, if at-
tempted to be entered into, shall be absolutely void without any
decree of.divorce or other legal process. Furthermore, if any persons,
resident of this State, one of whom is a lawfully committed and
undischarged patient or inmate of any State hospital or colony for the
insane, epileptic or feeble-minded, as above provided, shall, with
the intention of returning to reside in this State, go into another State
or country and there intermarry and return to and reside in this
State, cohabiting as man and wife, such marriage shall be governed
by the same law, in all respects as if it had been solemnized in this
State. The superintendent of any State hospital or colony of which
such insane, epileptic or feeble-minded person was a patient or inmate,
shall on oath report to the clerk of the court in which such marriage
license was issued in this State the fact that such person was a
lawfully committed patient or inmate of said hospital or colony,
and he, the clerk, shall forthwith enter this fact on the record of such
license in his office and mark the same void.

2. An emergency existing by reason of the immediate necessity
for the protection of patients and inmates of State hospitals and
colonies for the insane, epileptic, and feeble-minded from improper
and unlawful marriages, this act shall be in force from its passage.