Genealogy Chat

Looking at my grandparents wedding certificate it says they lived at the same address when they married. This was 1935 and she already had a child out of marriage in 1931 who has her maiden name. Would this have been frowned upon?

Do you know the address? It could have been a lodging house with lots of people living there or she could have been his live in housekeeper? Georgina.

Firstly they may not have been living together - couples often put the same address because it was cheaper to have the banns read in one area. I guess having a child out of wedlock would be frowned upon but it was a lot more common than you think. Certainly in earlier times it seems very common for a bride to be pregnant at her marriage.

They married in a registry office, would that make any difference to the Banns?

4 Low Hill, Liverpool. He was a labourer at the time.

At that time it would have been quite scandalous for them to liv etogether openly unmarried, you may find clue on the certificate. You say it was a Register Offiice wedding, what does it say on the certificate? If it say by certificate, then the proposed marriage would have been advertised on a board to be seen by the general public for three weeks, rather like the Bann being read in Church. If it says by Licence, then the details would not have been made public, so they may already have been living as man an wife and could have got married without anyone knowing. Jennifer

Hi Jennifer it says by certificate.

Then they may have lived together openly, or it was an address of convenience. You will probably never know the answer, unless another family memrer knows what their circumstances were at the time. If we did not come across these little enigmas during research, this hobby would not be nearly so interesting. Jennifer

Do you know if anyone else lived at the same address? It was completely normal at that time for a newly married couple to move in with one of their parents due to not being able to afford a place of their own. It was also normal, as someone else has said, for both the bride and groom to give the same address whether they both actually lived there or not. Another possibility is that one of them had moved into the other's family home as a lodger before the marriage took place. I have come across this a number of times in my research. They would not have been living together as a couple; more likely he would be sharing her brothers' bedroom or she his sisters'. This was not uncommon. If you get the chance, you might like to look the address up on the electoral register for that year and subsequent years. That way you would know exactly who lived there.

Your grandparents could have lived together and be known as Mr & Mrs X. Likewise, though the child was registered under your grandmother's maiden name, it could have been known as child X. My G grandparents lived together for 20 years before they married in 1925. My g grandmother was Mrs X and their children were all registered under their father's name, even though the parents weren't married. More recently, my dad was brought up using the surname of the man my grandmother 'chose' as his father (a family friend)- even though he wasn't registered under that name and the man wasn't his father!! maggie