Really beloved… why 1947 was THE year of marriage
It was a post-war world on the cusp of change and a record number of couples, including Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, were finally able to tie the knot. Historian TESSA DUNLOP talks to survivors of the generation who married for life
IT WAS the wedding of the decade and the first royal party since the Coronation of George VI in 1937. Seventy-five years ago this November 20, Princess Elizabeth and Philip, the newly-minted Duke of Edinburgh, tied the knot. The royal wedding became the icing on the cake for a generation of British couples who married in record numbers.
Rationing and austerity might have remained, but peacetime Britain had never seen so many young couples – a recordbreaking 401,210 – heading hopefully down the aisle as in 1947.
This was the last generation who not only got married in overwhelming numbers, but who also stayed married.
The previous comparable spike in had come in 1939-40 when desperate young lovers, facing estrangement and possible death, had tied the knot before battling the Nazis.
With their November 1947 “austerity” wedding, Elizabeth and Philip joined the ranks of ex-service men and women who had enjoyed intermittent wartime romances and were eager to settle down and find stability.
No matter that many of the brides wore recycled wedding dresses and rings, and had little prospect of their own marital home, their average age fell to a tender 22.
Today, 75 years on, divorce rates have risen exponentially (jumping by another 10 per cent after the first lockdown), in a society where marriage has become more diverse, older (the average age of a bride is now 31) and markedly less successful.
The end of the Sixties and beginning of the Seventies saw another bumper season for marriages but times had changed and so had the divorce laws.
Unlike the 1947 generation, far fewer couples lasted the course. Although weddings are now a lifestyle choice – just over half of today’s adult population have tied the knot – nearly 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce. Things could not have been more different in 1947.
The Attlee government was clear – women had “vital work” to do “ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race” and, for that task, marriage was a prerequisite.
Daphne Attridge, 99, from Chelmsford and in the same wartime Auxiliary Territorial Service as the late Queen, recalls: “Marriage was very, very upfront. It was a big part of life. It was our focus. So yes, there was a lot of talk about the Princess and Philip.”
Barbara Weatherill, 97, who like the late Queen also married in 1947, remembers the period well.
Sitting on her sofa in Selby, North Yorks, she smiles: “There was a song that was always on the radio – People Will Say We’re
In Love – and I was! There were a lot of us in love at that time. I don’t think it necessarily was Elizabeth and Philip’s favourite song, but it was played when they got engaged.”
It was 75 years ago but the tune – from the hit Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma – has remained stuck in Barbara’s mind because it resonated for her, too.
“I was nine months older than Princess Elizabeth,” she says.
“I always liked that our lives ran in parallel. My wedding dress and hand-embroidered veil are still in a cardboard box in the bottom of my wardrobe.” As Time magazine pointed out, Great Britain in 1947 had its very own apocalyptic quality. The British people had been “made to possess many months of misery… Gales boiled over… fallen trees blocked many main roads... bomb ruins crashed into bomb weakened houses.”
The country was a mess and the terrible weather made it worse. Barbara sighs: “Yes, I was a taxi driver in Rotherham and we couldn’t get out because of the storms. Perhaps that’s why so many of us got engaged, we needed something to look forward to.”
LIKE so many girls, she had met her fiancé during the war while serving as an ATS driver with Anti-Aircraft command. Now RAF airman Stan had come back from Gibraltar to be demobbed, and Barbara couldn’t wait to get married.
In 1941 women had been conscripted for the first time in British history, but as non-combatants.
It was young men who fought on the frontlines and risked their lives that came home to a hero’s welcome – never had the cachet of British boys been so high.
Almost every girl was keen to bag their man and make a new start in life, the young princess included. From the beginning of the war, Elizabeth had kept tabs on Prince Philip of Greece; sticking press cuttings into a scrapbook, dancing with joy when he sent her a photograph, and shiny-eyed if he ever visited Windsor Castle.
Likewise, much of Barbara’s relationship with Stan had been conducted remotely as she served with the Auxiliary Territorial Service in the UK and he overseas.
“We met when I was at home in Yorkshire on leave and after that we wrote letters to each other. Initially he signed them off from both him and his friend ‘Chips’. And then they were just from ‘Stan’,” she recalls today.
As for the returning servicemen, Philip Jarman, 100, from Hampshire, speaks for many when he explains: “The young generation who went through the war felt lucky to be alive and we wanted to crack on with life. Yes, I suppose we did get married young.”
But, the retired former accountant sagely points out that things were different back then. “How can I put this? A girl belonged to her father until she was married,” he says.
“Parents had a much greater say in the matter, or certainly interest in the matter in those days.You were expected to ask permission from the father of your girlfriend.”
Prince Philip made clear his desire to marry Elizabeth as early as 1944 but the King pressed pause. It was a long three-year wait before the royal engagement was finally announced in July 1947.
Meanwhile Barbara’s boyfriend Stan asked her father, Sergeant Crorken, for his permission to marry before he’d popped the question to Barbara.
“Our fathers knew each other, it was often the case in those days; they were policemen on adjoining beats in different parts of the West Riding Constabulary.” Contraception was unreliable and many of the young girls who walked down the aisle wore virginal white for good reason.
ACCORDING to Barbara, “First you got married and then you lived together.” Philip Jarman remembers marriage as the decent thing to do “if you wanted to be with the girl you loved,” but it was also a fraught decision.
“We took marriage very seriously. Divorce laws were much tighter – the whole thing was expensive and difficult. It was considered shameful to get divorced.”
The high domestic stakes that marriage entailed were reflected in public debate, with moral anxiety expressed at a rising divorce rate triggered by hasty wartime nuptials.
Incredibly, MPs raged that marriage was “too easy”, and the press lamented: “Disloyalty, unfaithfulness and disregard of social responsibilities in present-day marriages are unparalleled in our history.”
Against this backdrop of young frisky love and high moral tenor Elizabeth and Philip’s union had broad appeal – they were the inspiration for couples preparing to risk it all down the aisle and an ideal for a church and a state hoping to reassert the benefits of committed, sacrificial marriage.
Daphne Attridge keenly followed the royal love story. Like many, she became engaged during the war (and promptly unengaged). Until she found her perfect man, she pinned her romantic hopes vicariously upon the glamorous royal couple’s relationship.
“We wanted to know they were in love. That mattered to us,” she says today.
Post-war, the idea of a “companionate marriage” – based on affection, friendship, and sexual gratification – as opposed to marriages of convenience or social necessity, became very popular. The late 1940s and ‘50s saw women return to the domestic domain in their millions, with the expectation that they would “breed for Britain”.
But their brief flirtation with a more independent life during the war led to hopes of an equal partnership with their spouse, the man they anticipated would meet all their emotional and physical needs. Love was at the heart of post-war marriage and the honeymoon and wedding night acquired heightened significance. Barbara Weatherill recalls: “The Yorkshire Post had a page of brides and bridegrooms with the names of the bridesmaids, the church and the bride’s going away outfit – I wore a mustard suit with chocolate brown accessories, including brown leather shoes. And of course the honeymoon destination – we went to Devon.”
BARBARA and Stan visited the seaside village of Ilfracombe and enjoyed getting to know each other in a hotel for ten days. “I suppose before the wedding we couldn’t have been alone more than 12 times so it was very nice. We went swimming and walking. I shan’t tell you anymore. Stan was a very private man.”
Like the Princess the couple had the first of their four children within a year of marriage. With her new husband, Elizabeth travelled to Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire. The press had been tipped off and the newspapers were across every last detail. Curious onlookers stormed Romsey Abbey where the couple worshipped on the third day of their honeymoon.
Some were appalled by a new level of curiosity but most were profoundly affected by a national love story that kept them going on a cold winter’s night. Daphne nods: “Yes, perhaps we were the last generation that really believed in marriage and monarchy.”
As for Philip Jarman, his 71-year union with his late wife, Bletchley Park veteran Cora, lasted almost as long as Her Majesty’s.
“During the war our attitude was to stand firm and carry on and that attitude carried through to marriage.”
This was a generation that did things differently: in the words of our late Queen in her Silver Wedding year: “If I am asked what I think about family life after 25 years of marriage, I can answer with equal simplicity and conviction, I am for it.”
●●Elizabeth And Philip: The story of young love, marriage and monarchy (Headline, £20) is published today. To order for £18 with free UK P&P, visit expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832