Genealogy Chat

In the 1930's if you were re-marrying and claimed to be a widower would you have to produce evidence that your previous partner was dead?

Regards

Gary

No, no one was checking these things. I have found two bigamous marriages in my tree so far and I suspect it was a fairly common occurance to claim to be widow (er).

1930, not 1830 How do we know no-one was checking things by then?

As far as divorce is concerned

A history of divorce laws in Britain:
1857 Divorce was available through a Court of Law. Men could claim
adultery.
Women had to claim both adultery and cruelty. No divorce for
poor. There was a guilty party'.
1923 Women could divorce on the same terms as men.
1937 Grounds for divorce were extended to included desertion
1949 Legal Aid was available for divorce so poor people could apply.
1969 The grounds for divorce were changed. There is no guilty party.
Proof of irretrievable breakdown of marriage is required.
1984 The amount of time before application for divorce can be made
was reduced.

well doing some research for a distant relation i found his gran remarrying in 1925 as a widow with no record of her husbands death . he had deserted her many years before in about 1909 when she ended up in the workhouse pregnant & with a toddler ,having put her eldest two in Barnardos
Still cant find her husbands death . think he may have gone to Canada like the two chidren did but never did make contact again with the family including the children in Canada

I.G.P., how do you think anybody could have checked up on these things? There was no instant broadband to check records in 1930.
Hundreds if not thousands of BMDs registered every day, it simply would not have been possible to check every thing anybody said or wrote down. If there had been a little (or ginormous) office somewhere with a little man (or dozens of them) checking all the BMDs, don't you think we would have heard about it? I very much doubt that anyone does any checks now either despite the computerised records.

i am having the same problem cant find a death for the husband but found her with the children married to someone else would she of remarried using her maiden name???????