Family historian Paul Wilkins gives advice on searching divorce records.
When researching your family history one must be aware of the issue of divorce.
A key date to remember is January 11, 1858.
From this time a new Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes heard all divorce cases.
Before 1858 divorce was rare and almost unheard of largely because you would need to get a divorce through an Act of Parliament, which was very costly and a time-consuming process.
Few people would have been rich enough to have a divorce in this way.
One of the ways around this before 1858 was for someone to practice bigamy.
So if you think someone in your family tree may have had a divorce and you want to see if there is a record then you will need to contact the Principal Registry of the Family Division, based in London, they will do a search for you in the union index, this service is not free and you will be required to pay a fee.
Because getting a divorce was beyond many, bigamy became widespread.
In fact my grandmother’s first husband got convicted for practising it.
Bigamy in the past was known as a poor man’s divorce.
The actual meaning of the word is “twice married”.
If we look at bigamy in history, during the 17th century there were not many prosecutions, you could be sentenced to hang for the offence but not many people were.
Some escaped the hangman’s noose by being branded on the thumb, or as it was said in the day “Burnt in the hand”.
There are no records for people who practised bigamy unless they were discovered and they were prosecuted.
To search for a bigamous marriage you will need the year, location and the names of wives, if known.
A good place to start looking is newspapers.
If a marriage was bigamous the civil registration marriage certificate is not deleted.
* For more details go to: www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/infoabout/family/index.htm
* Paul Wilkins is a family historian and founder of Family History Detectives. Email your queries to him at pwilkins@familyhistorydetectives.co.uk
