Pearman/Catling marriage

[bubblebelle]

My ancestors are giving me the run around again. Can anyone find a marriage for Sidney Catling 1881-1961 and Gladys Maud L. Pearman.

Sidney was married in 1908 to Cecilia Jay, they had 2 daughters in 1911 and 1913.

The family history is that they divorced, but I have been unable to find a divorce.

So I thought I would work backwards with a copy of Sidney Catling's will, whose beneficiaries are 3 other children.

Further research shows the eldest child born in 1923 in Hendon and then 2 others in the 1930's in Salisbury.

Working with the information from their births and 1939 census (Salisbury) indicates that their mother was Gladys Maud L Pearman 1899-1961.

I have not been able to find a marriage between them nor Gladys to anyone else.

Is anyone else able to find what I cannot.

Many thanks

[Guest]

sorry cannot find a marriage for them. found a marriage for a Maud Pearman in 1914 but to a George Harrison??

Gladys
Pearman
Marriage quarter 2
Marriage year 1914
George Harrison
District West Ham
District number -
County Essex
Country England
Volume 4A
Page 768

[bubblebelle]

Thanks Val, I haven't been able to either, maybe there was no divorce and they just lived as man and wife, but I would have thought her death would have been registered under Pearman rather than Catling.

[bubblebelle]

Sorry Val, she would only have been 15 then.

[Elaine ..Spain]

Thanks Val, I haven't been able to either, maybe there was no divorce and they just lived as man and wife, but I would have thought her death would have been registered under Pearman rather than Catling.

Not necessarily. If her known name was Catling then that is the name that would have been used to register her death.
I would agree, it looks as if there was no divorce so Sidney was not free to marry.

[Guest]

oops didn't notice the birth year.
I have a few women living as a wife and the death is registered under the mans surname although they never married.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Her death would have been registered under the name she was using at death, unless anyone actually knew the truth.

Divorce was difficult and very expensive to obtain, especially if you were the "guilty" party, it was virtually impossible. More likely they never married, I think.

OC

Edit - and in 1914, females could marry at the age of 12, so don't rule it out on age alone!

[bubblebelle]

Thanks both of you, it reassures me I can leave it at that.

[Guest]

have you got Glady's baptism

[bubblebelle]

Thank OC. They were of the middle classes, so unlike my G.Grandmother, they may not have qualified for what I think was called the Poor Persons divorce.

Yes thank you Val

[Olde Crone Holden]

From what I remember, the Poor Person's divorce was only available to the innocent party, not to the guilty parties. If the innocent party didn't want a divorce (and many didn't) then there was nothing to be done about it.

I remember how shocked I was in the 1960s to learn that the (apparently respectable and very proper) parents of a friend were not married and that he had gone back to his wife (after 21 years....and she took him back!!!!!).

OC

[bubblebelle]

Yes OC my G Grandmother was the innocent party and got her divorce from G.Grandad who left her for another woman. I found the divorce at the TNA, hence being aware of the Poor person divorce. She had to prove that she had belongings including clothes to no more than the value of £50 and less than £2 a week funds.
She married again the following year, whereas my G.Grandfather and his lady were unable to marry until her runaway husband was shown to have died, whilst ironically the marriage between her and the runaway husband appears to have been bigamous on his part anyway.

There are a lot of divorces and separations in my family history! My Grandparents separated early in the war, but they did not divorce until just before they both died.

I recall being a teenager in the 70's when a friends parents divorced... it was quite shocking to us, then.

[Guest]

OC cannot say too much but while researching the snobbiest rellie of my Husband found her Mother in the Newspapers,she enticed another Woman's Husband away from her, committed bigamy and had an illegitimate child.

Bubble just realised both Sidney and Maud died the same year but of course you know that.

[bubblebelle]

Thanks yes Val.

I am sure there are many of my ancestors are turning in their graves as secrets they thought had been taken to their graves are uncovered.

[Sylvia C]

............. and how many of us have found our ancestors were pregnant when they got married???

I always thought one of my grandmother's was the very image of propriety, and she was certainly very strict with me ...................... until I bought some certificates :D


Someone contacted me years ago, and helped me break down a brick wall in OH's family ............ a surname that neither of us had heard about before entered the picture. The contact told me that at least the one who married into OH's family was "only" 5 months pregnant when she got married ............. most of the other females in that family that she had researched had the midwife waiting at the church door.

............. and these were very respectable middle class tenant farmers and millers


That led me to the theory of "fecundity proved, bride welcomed" :D

[Olde Crone Holden]

Ah Sylvia, my farming ancestors had a fine disregard for marriage too! I eventually put it down to the fact that no farmer wanted his daughter to marry some chancer just because she was pregnant, so that the chancer could get his feet under the table!

The farmers' sons did indeed not marry until the bride had proved herself fertile and sometimes not until she produced a son

OC

[Sylvia C]

OC ............

How true!!

It of course ensured that there would be grandchildren to look after the old folk in their old age ;)

The sons usually stayed with the parents so brought their wives and their children into the family, while the daughters usually moved to their in-laws.


I think it was the reason that the bride who was 5 months pregnant, went on to have a total of 20 children over the next 25 or 30 years. All survived, but unfortunately the parents didn't ....... they both died about 6 weeks apart when the youngest child was about 6 years old.

One of the older sons inherited the farm, worked it with 2 of his brothers, and had to take care of about 6 of his youngest siblings! If I remember correctly (without checking my records), he didn't marry until the youngest child was off his hands, and the 2 brothers who worked the farm with him never did marry. Wonder why??


In fact less than half the children went on to have children of their own ........... most of those didn't marry, a couple did marry but no children. None of the ones who married had a large family.

I reckon that the older children had been responsible for raising the younger ones, and had enough of child-rearing by the time they grew up! The eldest, a boy, was 28 years old when the youngest child was born and had been married for 8 years.


It's quite incredible to think that OH's father actually knew #19, who didn't die until about 1938

[Olde Crone Holden]

I've noticed that too, Sylvia. My farmers all had huge families until about the mid 1860s. I am descended from one of a family of 15 children. Only four of the 15 married and only two had any children. I did wonder if the gene pool finally dried up as there were repeated intermarriages for about 400 years - but almost everyone lived well into their 70s and 80s, so possibly not. More likely as you say - fed up with child rearing!

OC

[Sylvia C]

OC .........

your theory is also very valid .......... OH's family all lived in Westmorland, Yorkshire and a part of northern Lancashire, and moved back and forth between them. The same names crop up again and again as marriage partners. So there was some sort of intermingling between cousins or second cousins.

Those of us researching this name find that there are actually 2 lines with the same surname, obviously descended from a common ancestor although no-one seems to have found that person. They are all farmers and millers, the same forenames are found in both lines, and both lines move back and forth. They will even just switch farms and mills.

With only censuses at 10 year intervals often the only documentary evidence, it becomes difficult sometimes to know whether "George and Mary" at the farm in Westmorland on census A is the same "George and Mary" at that same mill 10 years later ....... it often is not! One just hopes that the family will use a different forename for one of the children, so that the two can be separated.