Case File, 1894
The case file from the proposed divorce of John and Florence Churchward is held by The National Archives in Kew. The file has been digitised and is availablee at Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk)
1COURT
The Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division was created in 1873. From 1860 divorce cases were generally heard by a single judge.
2PETITIONER 2
The spouse petitioning p for divorce, in this t case the husband, is always a listed first.
3HOLLIDAY 3
William John Holliday H was the ‘corespondent’, r the person with w whom Florence is i alleged to have committed c adultery.
4INTERVENTION 4
The queen’s pproctor intervened to aargue that there was evidence e of collusion aand the decree nisi sshould be rescinded.
5DISMISSED 5
The dismissal of the t petition meant that John J and Florence remained r legally married. There is no evidence that they ever reconciled before their deaths in the 1930s.
6CLOSED UNTIL 1995
Files are closed for 100 years from the end of the year in which the case was heard, rather than the exact date.
interesting part is usually the ‘petition’ (see example, right), setting out the details of the wedding (the certificate is usually included), where the couple lived, the birth of any children, and the basis on which the divorce was sought. Details had to be given of the person(s) with whom the ‘respondent’ had committed adultery, and the particular circumstances.
In petitions by wives, ‘cruelty’ was relied on more often than the other aggravating factors, and here we find a depressing litany of physical violence. If the wife was alleging ‘desertion’, then the dates of the separation are usefully included. If a divorce was granted then the relevant dates (of the preliminary decree nisi and the subsequent decree absolute) will be recorded on the cover of the file.
Searching Discovery
The vast majority of files up to 1937 have survived in The National Archives at Kew (TNA), and the archive’s online catalogue Discovery can be searched for the names of the petitioner, respondent or co-respondent: discovery.nationalarchives.gov. uk. However, the ‘100-Year Rule’ regarding privacy means you will need to wait to see what is contained in files created after 1922.
Unfortunately, scarcely any post-1937 files survive: as the number of divorces increased, so courts were unable and unwilling to store the mountains of paperwork involved. All that can be ascertained from the Central Family Court is whether a divorce was granted, and even this entails a fee (£10 if you can provide the case number, otherwise £45 for every 10 years of records searched). You will need to complete and return Form D440, which you can download from gov.uk/ government/publications/formd440-request-for-search-for
divorce-decree-absolute.
Finally, the statistics on the number of divorces granted each year can help to put the likelihood of a divorce in context. The number exceeded 100 in 1859, 1,000 in 1918, and 10,000 in 1943. These increases reflected both social and legal changes. From 1922 at least some divorces were granted outside London, from 1923
wives no longer had to prove ‘aggravated’ adultery, and in 1937 the grounds for divorce were extended to include cruelty and desertion.
However, remember that for many of our ancestors, divorce would not have been an option. Only in 1971 did it become possible to obtain a divorce without showing that the other spouse was at fault, and then only after a period of separation, and only in 2022 will the need to make allegations in support of a claim of irretrievable breakdown finally be consigned to history.
For many of our ancestors, divorce would not have been an option