Reasons for not getting married

[Boongie Pam]

There are many reasons.

a sibling of one of my directs was a domestic servant and had 5 illegitimate children by the same father.  The "big" house she worked for only employed single women so they only married after she left their employ.

Seems farcical by any logic, but hayho.  

If a father did not agree with a relationship they may only have married after he died.

If they lived in a parish that had a strict church going vicar he may not agree to marry them, if he leaves or they leave and find a more sympathetic priest then that could see a late marriage.

Or just plain skint.  But when their luck changed they had the readys to spend on a ceremony.

I have kind of examples of all of these.

Pam
 

[jaq]

Reasons for not getting married
  Marriage changes passion. Suddenly you're in bed with a relative.
 

[MrsLizzy]

It seems to me the main reason in those days for not marrying, especially when a couple had had children, may have been because one or both was already married to other people.

It wasn't uncommon when marriages went sour for one party simply to up sticks and move elsewhere, setting up home and starting a new family.  Sometimes the new partner had no idea there had been a previous marriage and the couple "married" bigamously, the married partner relying on no-one ever finding out.

My great-grandparents never married but my great-grandmother was always called Mrs Westley, and it was only recently, after years of fruitless search for their marriage entry, that we found a double record of her burial in both her "married" name and that of her "previous" husband.