Genealogy Chat

Oh dear think of all those that did marry, or did they not know about the bill. Irene

Read this By the 1830's, eminent people who had contracted these marriages and feared they might later be declared void, sought to have their position stabilized and a bill was introduced by Lord Lyndhurst to regularize them. The bill that was passed in 1835 enacted that "all marriages which shall hereafter be celebrated between persons within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity shall be absolutely null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever." At the same time the act did legalize all marriages within the prohibited degrees of affinity (i.e. with deceased wife's sister) that had been celebrated before August 31, 1835. That meant that all those eminent people (and their children) were safe. It was only any later marriages, after the date of the marriage act which were void. Beginning in the 1860's, bills were introduced in Parliament just about annually to allow marriage with deceased wife's sister; it finally passed in 1907. The issue prompted the classic line from Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta 'Iolanthe' - "We will prick that annual blister, marriage to deceased wife's sister". In 1907 they finally managed to repeal at least half of it. The Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage act of 28 August that year made it possible to marry one's sister-in-law. Yet it wasn't until 1921 that the Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act was passed which made marriage to a brother-in-law legal. Bob

I read in a genealogy book recently that marriage to one's deceased wife's sister was illegal up till early in the 20th century. Does anyone know definitely if this was also true for marriage to one's deceased husband's brother, which we believe we have an instance of in our family in the 19th century. Corinne Morris