Irregular marriages

Question

Here is an interesting one for you. My grandfather had a younger sister who was a very naughty lady... Having married her first husband in 1915, she subsequently married another man using a completely fictitious name without first having resource to the divorce courts. Unsurprisingly, some six months later the second 'husband' applied to have the marriage annulled which was of course granted.

My question is this; should I record details of the bigamous marriage in the same way that I would record regular marriages (i.e. married to Joe Bloggs from 1 January x to 31 December y)?

A secondary question concerns the recording of her various aliases in the name section. How on Earth would I go about this given the constraints of the standard form. Official documents in the U.K. Public Records Office list her under a variety of names. She is even recorded in Debretts under an incorrect name!

Answer 1

Write it all in the bio.  Leave her Current Last Name as the name of the first husband she married.

Comments

Wouldn't the CLN be that of the last LEGAL husband, rather than the first? (Depending, of course, on how many legal marriages she had.)

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Current last name would be the name on her death certificate.

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From what the OP originally wrote, she married legally, then bigamously married.  So I was saying that she should have as CLN the first and only legal marriage.

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I agree with Deb.

Though the marriage was illegal, the name change was perfectly legal in England  .Even today, '' in law you can simply adopt a new name and start using it''  

( People  are more likely to do it nowadays by deed poll to get documentation because otherwise its hard to do things like open a bank account ) https://deedpolloffice.com/change-nam

This  second page explains the law and usage concerning names over the centuries

https://deedpolloffice.com/change-name/law/surname

Whatever she chose to call herself, if it was accepted and used by others that  was her legal name. The paper trail here shows a sequence of such names. 

I've also got a profile where the 2nd marriage was bigamous. It took place several counties away from where the first wife was abandoned along with the children. The 2nd wife might not have even known about the first. ( although its also possible that her first husband was still alive ) They had children who were registered and baptised with their fathers name. She was buried with her 'married' name.  That to me is her last name. We report the past, we don't change it.

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I think I was saying (very badly) the same thing as Deb said.  There is more than one way to be legally married. and more than one way to have a legal last name .. except in America, it seems.  (I am continually bombarded by mail addressed to me as Mrs husband's first name husband's last name, as though the act of marrying someone automatically changes your name even though I did not adopt his name.  Even if I had, I would still not have been Mrs anything.  Proper etiquette places my name first and never with his first name in place of mine.)  Bigamous in the eyes of "the law", if the couple lived together as husband and wife, or had others recognise them as a married couple no matter what the actual situation "in law" they were still legally married in many jurisdictions (even, sometimes, in America).

Scotland's People has a listing of what is (was) accepted as a legal marriage there, and it wasn't always the one performed by a minister or registrar (or necessarily registered).  I need to make a list of those, just as I did for when the census records were done (never the same date or month).

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Absolutely ,there never was a legal requirement in England e to adopt a husband's surname. Most women do but it's only convention.

Marriage Laws  vary between countries. There was no common law marriage in England and divorce or anullment were both expensive and difficult. There were quite a lot of bigamous marriages in the 19th C . The courts often dealt quite lightly with offenders .This was especially true when an orginal spouse had been abusive .Nevertheless, they were still found guilty and punished.

  If 'my' bigamous man had died  intestate with some money,  his  2nd 'wife'  would have had no rights in law.  Even quite  recently she would have been  denied  a widows pension. The children of his 2nd illegal marriage would have no rights of inheritance; they were illegitimate. The father died in the workhouse, no-one had any reason to investigate. His children may never have known; it was only nosy genealogists that found the 'truth'

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nosy genealogists . . .

commented by Helen Ford

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Ain't that the truth! 

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@Ros,

That presupposes she only married legally once. There could have been a number of legal marriages after the bigamous one if she legally divorced or her first husband died. In any case, I'm still of the opinion that her name at death is her current last name regardless of how she came by it.

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Of course she could be called something else if she married again and again and again.  I was just going by the original post, which said she married in 1915 and then bigamously married. 

So, say she married Fred Smith in 1915, then bigamously married John Jones when she felt like it, *and supposing Fred did not die and she did not remarry LEGALLY*, then her CLN would be Smith.  If Fred did die and she legally remarried Joe Bloggs, her CLN would be Bloggs.  It would never be Jones.  And the best place to put all this? In the bio...

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But if she went by Jones and was known by everyone as Jones and Jones was on her gravestone, Jones would be her CLN (unless she remarried and took that husband's name .. or she, for whatever reason, took another last name at some stage).

If I started using the last name McArnold today, and everyone from now until I died knew me as McArnold, it doesn't matter one grain of sand what anyone else thinks is my legal name; I would legally be McArnold.  My government would accept that as my legal last name at death as well, even if I had never taken out any paperwork on it.

I know someone who lived with her mate for 30-some years, being known by his last name.  They were not married, as he was unable to divorce his wife.  The legal situation was that she was legally his last name because she was known by it, had been using it for whatever time, had not assumed its use for any nefarious purpose etc.  The only possibility of a problem would be if, when he died, his children contested his Will.  The way around that is to have your clever little solicitor/lawyer write it up in such a way that it was extremely clear she was meant to be the heir no matter what the marital status was.  (And a smart thing would be to make sure the kids were given a decent inheritance as well, even if they have to wait 10 to 15 years to get it.) There is legal and there is legal.  Marriage doesn't make a legal last name.

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Thanks everyone. Case of light blue touchpaper and retire... All this only goes to strengthen my long held belief that the primary name for women should be the name they were born with, anything else, however acquired, even through marriage, should be regarded as a subsidiary name or alias. I know it would be difficult to do, but a section in which subsequent names were listed in full would be a great help to genealogists. If say, I were a descendant of Lionel Jackson Mars (the man my Great Aunt Biddy married bigamously), and I wanted to track my ancestor's history, it would be far easier to do if Wikitree had a heading somewhere in its system which read 'Margaret Standish Tollemache' and linked to Stella Beatrice Perry rather than having to dig through a long winded biography to find it. It would also be far higher in any search engine's list of matches. Isn't one of our aims to make it easier for genealogists to research their ancestry?