Kelly, Meaney and White - a delicate situation...

[AuntieMomo]

Thanks Forfarian, that is extremely useful.  I enjoy the research but I'm no historian and am often puzzled by details as in this marriage, so that is very helpful.  Elizabeth Kelly and Arthur White did get married by declaration in front of 2 witnesses.

I've just done a bit more research on Ancestry, which drives me mad, but I found Arthur White.  He was indeed from Canning Town in Essex and lived there with his father and siblings. In the marriage register entry, he lists his mother as Jessie Hall, but from the 1911 census this seemed to be a person his father was living with and could not have been his mother, based on the ages of the Hall and White children.  Why was an Essex boy in Falkirk?

Arthur White also seems to have married someone else in Canning Town, in 1923, 4 years after his Scottish marriage.  There is no further mention of him in that family tree, and his wife went on to marry someone else.  Arthur White remains elusive...

[suey]

To answer the last sentence in your last paragraph. 
I have a family c1920-1930.  Mrs A leaves her husband to live with Mr B.who has left his wife.
They have five children together, all the children were registered under their mothers married surname (B) in one particular registration district.  They were then all registered again in another registration district under Mr Bs surname.  Mr B and Mrs A lived as man and wife and we’re together for their remaining years.

In Scotland every birth had to be registered in the district where the it occurred. So you couldn't do as you have described without lying consistently, five times, about where the children were born.

You would expect the births to be indexed twice; once under the mother's married surname, and once under the father's surname.

You do sometimes get a double registration, if a birth takes place in a registration district other than that of the parents' domicile. In that case the Registrar in the birth district sends the information to the Registrar in the district of domicile, and he adds the information to his register, so you get duplicate entries in the register, but the parents still only register it once.

Thank you, I didn’t know that,