Genealogy Chat

Can someone please tell me why I could find my ancestor Letitia Cailes getting married on FreeBMD, but no record of her on the BMD register in Ancestry.com. Can someone also tell me whether bigamy was the thing in the 19th century because I think one of my ancestors was a bigamist.

Hi Genievieve My grandmother married a bigamist in 1897 and had her first child with him, Iv read that the innocent party in a bigamus marriage had to PROVE that it was so and that proceedings against such crimes were heard in the House of Lords rather than the local courts, When I have time Im hoping to trawl through the local newspapers for Sunderland to see if I can find anything,,,,of course,,,he would have gone to prison wouldnt he?

I guess it just depends on how far both sites have got. From known people in my tree I can only locate about 25% on FreeBMD and even fewer on Ancestry. Janet

Thanks for that Claire and Janet, I guess my relative did not get caught because no one in the family knows about it and one of his daughters only died in the 1970's. As for freebmd I think we will have to wait until it has been fully updated because I only found Letitia last night and have been putting the same question to it for weeks now, I just wish there was a way to check dates and names without spending money because family bible dates do not seem to match either LDS or bmd, years are vague, spelling dreadful and people changed their names willy nilly. But it is addictive!!!!

Hi Genevieve Bigamy was probably quite the thing in those days as a full divorce could only be granted by a Private Act of Parliament (from 1668 to 1857) and could be quite costly. People therefore preferred to separate and marry again bigamously until the law caught up with them, if at all, or just live together. Helen Berkshire