Legality of second marriage

[Plummiegirl]

And often more than once 

[coombs]

If a man left his wife in England in 1885, emigrated to Utah, America and remarried there in about 1890 the chances of him getting away with bigamy was quite likely. 

[dusty_streets]

Does anyone know how much a divorce cost around 1900? Or where divorce records can be found in Derbyshire please?
I have a lady who was widowed & (m) for a 2nd time, then got (m) again a 3rd time but used her 1st husband's surname - as if the second (m) hadn't existed? Her 2nd husband was alive & well & he got (m) again too.

[stanmapstone]

The very poor could sue (for divorce) without payment of fees ‘in forma pauperis’ if they could prove their lack of means. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/RdLeaflet.asp?sLeafletID=53


Stan

[coombs]

I am not sure about 1900 but I think in about 1860 the cost for a divorce was £1000.

[stanmapstone]

The only mention of divorce costs that I can find in 'The Times' is in the case of Kemp v Welch, May 1910, where the husband was ordered to pay his wife's costs which were £296. This seems to be equivalent to about £20,000 using the retail price index. There are a couple of bankruptcies where divorce costs were given as the reason.

Stan

[Plummiegirl]

I also think that one of the prohibitive aspects of divorce is that for many years women were considered their husbands property.  Also one or both parties would have to prove that the other had committed adultery (the most usual cause of divorce at this time)

One practice was that if both parties wanted & could afford a divorce, the husband would arrange to be "caught" in a hotel room with another women.  They would not have had to be in bed or engaged in any sexual act, just the fact that they had booked into a room was enough.  Then the wife could file for divorce citing his infidelity.

Also many years ago, there was the practice of selling your wife to another man.  This was I think a middle ages thing.

[stanmapstone]

The sale of wives in the British Isles, whilst illegal was not uncommon in the 18th., 19th., and even into the 20th. centuries. This practice was one, yet invalid, route to divorce.
Samuel Pyeatt MENEFEE, Wives for Sale: an Ethnographic Study of British
Popular Divorce Oxford 1984 ISBN: 0631133011

Wife sales were often conducted on market days and the sale recorded in the auctioneer's accounts, occasionally parish officers acted as auctioneers. The arrangements seem to have been quite amicable and when national news was thin were reported in the London newspapers as well as the local ones. Very
occasionally references to wife sales can be found in parish registers.
"Marriage Laws, Rites, Records and Customs" Colin R. Chapman. ISBN 1873686021

Also see "The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/casterbridge/shortsumm.html


The procedure was based on the way cattle were sold. It was part of an old order in which a wife had been seen as the property of her husband. This old order was winning social disapproval by the early 19th century. In Staffordshire, for example, the custom of wife selling followed a fairly rigid pattern. A man in search of freedom took his wife to market, with a length of rope attached to her neck. He paid a toll that gave him the right to sell merchandise, then paraded her around the market extolling her virtues. Interested males would then bid for her in a general auction. Once a bid was accepted the husband would hand over the toll ticket as proof of ownership, and the trio would then retire to the inn and seal the deal with a beer or two.
http://www.ontalink.com/history/18th_century/regions/British/wife_selling.html

Stan

[stanmapstone]

  Also one or both parties would have to prove that the other had committed adultery (the most usual cause of divorce at this time)

Although from 1857 to 1922, adultery was effectively the sole ground for divorce, a wife could only petition for divorce on her husband's adultery if his offence was accompanied by one or more other specified matrimonial transgressions (either incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion). The same restrictions did not apply to husbands who petitioned for divorce because of their wives' adultery. There were 11,502 divorces 1857-1900, and 16,762 from 1901 to 1920.

Stan