Gretna Green Marriages

[Forfarian]

You have taken the 10 most common names in Scotland to use in your calculations.
Surely most of the 'irregular' marriages at Gretna Green were non-Scots?

Yes, probably. I only did it that way because you can't search in the SP index without putting in some sort of search parameter. Several of the same names - Smith, Brown, Wilson for example - are also among the commonest surnames in England.

...Divide that by the number of years from 1855 to 2016 (162) and that would mean that 6506 weddings a year, or 18 weddings every day of the year including Sundays, were conducted at Gretna (Green) or Graitney.
But there is no central depository of Gretna Green marriages therefore you have no idea of how many irregular marriages were performed.
You would have to call it the X factor.

No, but I quoted the estimates of the ministers in 1793 (60 per annum) and 1834 (300-400 per annum - that is, about one a day, not 18 or anything near it), and of course there would have been none at all after (I think) 1939 when marriage by declaration was abolished and civil marriage was introduced.

You called it Gretna (Green) or Graitney.
SP call it Gretna with no acknowledgement of a Green.

Of course SP don't call it Gretna Green. Gretna Green is just one settlement in the parish/RD which SP calls 'Gretna or Graitney' from 1855 to 1968. In fact the ex-tobacconist described by the minister in the 1793 Account, Joseph Paisley, actually moved from Gretna Green to Springfield, in the same parish, in 1791 and carried on his business there until his death. So trying to consider Gretna Green in isolation from the rest of the parish is pointless.

I don't dispute that there a lot of irregular marriages were performed in the parish of Graitney or Gretna, most of them in Gretna Green, which was the first village or hamlet after crossing the border. I don't dispute that most of the couples married irregularly in Graitney or Gretna, whether at Gretna Green, Springfield or anywhere else in the parish, were from England.

What I do not believe is that there were so many of these runaway couples that the total number of marriages performed in the parish of Gretna or Graitney amounted to one in six of all marriages performed in Scotland. I have produced some evidence, some it of based on contemporary documentary evidence, and some based on research, admittedly quite crude, using actual data available on the SP web site, all of which suggests that one in six is a gross exaggeration. I have seen no evidence of any kind to support the assertion that the one in six is correct. If and when someone provides me with such evidence I will consider it, but until then, what I have researched and presented here suggests to me that it is nonsense.

[Gan Yam]

You called it Gretna (Green) or Graitney.
What I do not believe is that there were so many of these runaway couples that the total number of marriages performed in the parish of Gretna or Graitney amounted to one in six of all marriages performed in Scotland. I have produced some evidence, some it of based on contemporary documentary evidence, and some based on research, admittedly quite crude, using actual data available on the SP web site, all of which suggests that one in six is a gross exaggeration. I have seen no evidence of any kind to support the assertion that the one in six is correct. If and when someone provides me with such evidence I will consider it, but until then, what I have researched and presented here suggests to me that it is nonsense.

I think that the 1 in 6 marriages refers to the present and recent past as opposed to the more distant past.  The link below is a GRO for Scotland document confirming that 17.4% of scottish marriages take place in Gretna and the figures are quoted up to  year 2000, so possibly this figure has increased. It also notes that 75% of all participants were not scots.


https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files/statistics/old/op4-gretna.pdf

[Forfarian]

Very good, thank you, Gan Yam.

So the one in six relates only to very recent times, therefore by definition not to the time when marriage by declaration was legal, and it has no bearing whatsoever on the number of irregular marriages performed at but not registered in the parish/RD of Graitney or Gretna in the 18th and 19th centuries. For that practice, we have only the information provided by the ministers in 1793 in the Statistical Account of Scotland and in 1834 in the New Statistical Account of Scotland.

 

[StevieSteve]

To be fair, it was only you that tried to relate it back to olden times. Every mention before your contribution was referring to the comment in wiki that said '1 in 6 marriages  is ...'

[Gan Yam]

The GRO Scotland paper does say:

“The total number of marriages at this time is not known but over the following 100 years or so it was certainly several tens of thousands.  The numbers dropped dramatically after 1857 when scots law prescribed certain conditions for irregular marriages.  Though such marriages were recognised until 1939, they were not included in the official marriage registers.”

If it was several tens of thousand, as acknowledged by GRO Scotland, and you estimate between 30000 and 100000 over the 100 year period that equates to between approx. 1 to 3 marriages every day of every year for a 100 years, still a lot but less than the current 18+ a day, that takes place in the various venues in Gretna/Gretna Green. 

"the majority of couples come from England as was the case in the mid eighteen to mid nineteenth century"

The population of Scotland during that period was much smaller than today, then I suppose the percentage of these marriages against all Scottish marriages would be quite high, accepting that the majority of participants were not Scottish. As there are no true figures it can only be conjecture.

[Ruskie]

I feel that this thread is probably close to reaching it's natural conclusion, but might it be worth considering the Gretna Green marriages performed by the Langs (available on Ancestry).

They say:

The entire collection covers the years 1794 to 1895, with a few earlier references. Since Gretna Green marriages were not exactly formal, the record keeping was not regulated, nor was it centralized. The Lang Registers make up approximately 50% of all Gretna Green marriages performed during the specified time period. The Lang Registers is the largest single collection of Gretna Green marriage registers and includes over 10,000 records.

So if the Lang's performed over 10,000 marriages in this time frame, and another 10,000 were performed in Gretna Green (implying the other 10,000 are also irregular?), that makes 20,000.

It might be an interesting exercise to look through a portion of the marriages to see how many are Scottish couples, and how many are from elsewhere (place of origin sometimes noted and sometimes not I beleive). An exercise not for the feint hearted.

 

[buckhyne]

I googled Gretna Green and this is what Wikipedia says about the place

Wikipedia
Gretna Green is one of the world's most popular wedding destinations, hosting over 5,000 weddings each year in the Gretna/Gretna Green area, and one of every six Scottish weddings.
My note: If that is true then wow!

I think that the 1 in 6 marriages refers to the present and recent past as opposed to the more distant past.  The link below is a GRO for Scotland document confirming that 17.4% of scottish marriages take place in Gretna and the figures are quoted up to  year 2000, so possibly this figure has increased. It also notes that 75% of all participants were not scots.


https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files/statistics/old/op4-gretna.pdf

Excellent link.
Table 1 also shows that Gretna now accounts for more than one in six (17.4%) of all marriages in Scotland.

______________

Wow! that must be where Wikipedia got it's information.