Why did this couple marry twice on the same day?
Our expert investigates why Tracey Hillon’s 3x great aunt and uncle wed on both sides of Portsmouth Harbour within 24 hours
Q
Previous issues of your magazine have informed me that bigamy is not common, and when it does happen, it is more likely to be a man than a woman. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that my 3x great aunt Eliza Bewsey was not only a bigamist, but married two men on the same day!
When I first glanced at the marriage certificates, dated 18 May 1840, it appeared as though Eliza married William John Hills in Alverstoke then hopped on a boat to marry William Roe in nearby Portsea.
Both of the marriages were by banns and had a witness in common. William John Hills described himself as a mariner, with father John Hills listed as a carpenter. William Roe described himself as a seaman, with father Thomas Hills listed as a tailor.
However, when I viewed the original parish register images on findmypast.co.uk I realised that the two Williams had very similar signatures. It would appear my auntie had married the same man twice by different names in different parishes. But why? Tracey Hillon
A
It is surprising just how many cases there are of couples going through two or more ceremonies of marriage with one another! The location, nature and timing of the ceremonies can help to point to the most likely reason.
In your case, the locations of the marriages – on opposite sides of Portsmouth Harbour – suggest some possible motivations. One is that some relatives lived on Portsea Island and some on the Gosport side, and the pair wanted to hold a ceremony that each side of the family could attend.
But why would William have adopted different surnames? Fraud can probably be ruled out, given the localised nature of parish relief. There were, however, some parishes that offered specific financial benefits to couples who married, which might have be an incentive for having more than one ceremony in different names.
Another reason might be confusion: if William had been born before his parents’ marriage, then he might be unsure as to which surname to use.
Some alternative reasons can probably be ruled out in this case, but might help to explain other dual ceremonies. For example, discovering two ceremonies in the same parish within a relatively short space of time often indicates that some technical defect with the first ceremony was suspected.
If you find one wedding taking place at some distance from the couple’s parishes, with unrelated people acting as witnesses, and a second some months later in the presence of family, this strongly suggests that the couple feared opposition and eloped the first time around. Second ceremonies placated family members, and reassured any doubts about the validity of the first.
Where the gap between the two ceremonies is longer, and the second takes place some distance from the couple’s home, there may have been a more fundamental obstacle to the validity of the first marriage. The death of a first spouse, or a change in the law allowing a divorce to be obtained, freed such couples to validate their union with a second marriage.
If the groom was a soldier, the second marriage might well be because he had finally got permission to marry from his commanding officer. Only a proportion of a regiment were permitted to be married at any given time, so years could elapse between two marriage ceremonies ‘on the strength’ of the army.
Where the ceremonies take place on the same day, the most likely reason is that the couple were combining a ceremony according to their own religious rites with what the law required.
This was more common before 1837, when all marriages except Jewish and Quaker ones had to take place according to Anglican rites. After 1837 any place of worship could be registered for marriage if certain conditions were fulfilled.
So this case of two ceremonies in the Anglican church on the same day is truly intriguing. One possibility is that William and Eliza wanted to take advantage of the steam-powered ferry that had began operations from Gosport to Portsmouth on 4 May 1840, reducing the journey time to fourand-a-half minutes for a penny.
If they were trying to do so as a joke or wager, they might well have wanted to escape detection by having the banns called in different names. Sometimes the explanation is that our ancestors were simply having a lark! Rebecca Probert