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  • divorce?

    hello, i have a slight problem with my cousin's tree, i'd like some pointers?

    ok, i have palmerston brown (b.1885) married in 1906, melbourne, victoria to ethel maud bray. he divorced her in 1908, from newspaper clippings on the trove site. she was obviously pregnant by another man 2 mths after marriage, and she admitted to sleeping with a jockey prior to marriage.

    in 1911, he married my cousin's grandmother, and on the cert it stated the divorce date. now also in 1911, his wife sued him for not looking after her! she was 17, and this comes from trove as well. the next information i have of the wife is the marriage to my cousin's grandfather, where she states she is a spinster in 1918?

    how could she claim she was a spinster at her second marriage? would she have divorced palmerston? i couldn't find any divorce proceedings on the public records site.
    i also couldn't find any evidence of his death? is it possible palmerston believed he was divorced, but technically wasn't, making his second marriage bigamous? therefore allowing my cousins grandparents to get married?

  • #2
    PROV (Public records office of Victoria) has the index to divorce records which you can scan through. I found the listing for the 1908 divorce.

    We couldn't locate this page on our website. Sorry!   We do our best to ensure that all of the links on our website are working correctly so you may be using a bookmarked link to content that is no longer available. The specific content you're looking for may have changed or been retired (such as any links to access the collection). If you go directly to prov.vic.gov.au you should be able to navigate to the content you're seeking by searching the catalogue (for records) or website (for articles, blogs or other website content).


    It would seem that you can go to PROV and view the full causes and case files. They are only listed by first letter in the index, so you have to carefully look through all the Bs. You probably need to check that the divorce acutallly went through to Decreee Absolute not just Decreee Nisi.

    I can see the 1911 TRove article, but I cannot understand how a 17year old girl came to be married and in such circumstances, surely she would have needed parental permission to marry ?

    Di

    I can see from the ancestry index that she did marry twice in her maiden name, so either she was telling fibs the second time, or maybe the first marriage was annulled, (perhaps not if she was pregnant in 1911).

    Ancestry is showing a couple of Electoral Rolls entries, 1909 and 1914 for Palmerston, which might give some clues (if you have a sub, of course)
    Diane
    Sydney Australia
    Avatar: Reuben Edward Page and Lilly Mary Anne Dawson

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    • #3
      hi di, she had permission from her father to marry palmerston, as per the marriage cert.
      i had looked through the divorces 1911-1923, and didn't see palmerston or pearl. they apparently had a daughter, but i couldn't find any evidence of her, unless she was registered in pearl's maiden name?
      i dont have access to ancestry atm, but if pearl was on the electoral rolls, she wouldnt have been on them till 1916 right?

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      • #4
        Don't know if it's the same in Australia, but in England you can call yourself whatever name you like. You marry in whatever name you are using at the time.

        Also, divorce was seen as scandalous back then, so many divorcees would try to cover that up and call themselves widows or spinsters - no one checked (in England).

        OC

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        • #5
          actually i have an aunt and uncle in england in the 1920's, brother and sister, who both divorced their first spouses, and mentioned it in their 2nd marriage certs. and palmerston admitted to divorcing his first wife, so why would pearl have reason to lie? her own parents married young, father was 23, mother was 16. they initiated divorce in 1892/3, but it was thrown out of court, which is weird, because they had many children from the time they married to around 1900. i suspect pearl may have divorced her second husband, as i cannot find her death, though i know she passed. of course she could have died after 1985, which would explain why she isn't in the indexes.

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          • #6
            I think she might have lied because the circumstances of her divorce were not to her credit, lol.

            On the other hand, she may have truly believed that she was a spinster again, as she was no longer married.

            OC

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            • #7
              Yes, Pearl would not have been on the electoral rolls until she turned 21, so may not have been old enough to vote during her first marriage. You can search by name and come up with a district, even if you cannot see the images.

              Pearl appears in her second married name in 1919 and 1924 only, second husband right up till 1954. Trove is showing a petition for divorce by the second husband in 1939 (with a lovely ad. advising her "current whereabouts unknown" that he is petitioning for divorce for desertion). She must have changed her name and dropped out of sight. I suppose if she went interstate it would have been very hard to find her. He died in 1972, but I cannot see anything for Pearl Shaw or Pearl Lilian Edith anything.

              Still does not explain how she managed to marry under her maiden name the second time, unless she flat out lied.

              There are two trees on ancestry for the second husband, maybe the owners might know something. One is a public tree.

              Di


              my gg gran remarried as a widow in 1918, but did not bother with getting a divorce as her first husband left for NSW in 1914 and I guess she considered herself widowed and he was not going to come back to reveal all. They were not living together in 1911, so the marriage breakdown was long term.

              yes OC, its the same in Australia, you can call yourself whatever you like, without going as far as changing your name by deed poll, as long as its not for illegal purposes.

              Di
              Last edited by dicole; 06-02-11, 01:14.
              Diane
              Sydney Australia
              Avatar: Reuben Edward Page and Lilly Mary Anne Dawson

              Comment


              • #8
                the divorce between palmerston and pearl went through to degree nisi in the article. is there any way to see if it was absolute? i guess looking at the papers?

                pearl married a 3rd time to arthur rushton. this would have been after 1939, and most likely queensland, as my cousin said she died in brisbane on 18 aug 1986. she also says pearl had a 3rd child. so i assume she did have a child by palmerston b.1911/2.

                she says pearl's second husband, her grandfather is said to have had a child out of wedlock by one rose refern prior to marriage in 1918. i could only find evidence of 2 rose redferns, bothe deaths, one in 1899, and the other in 1972, her maiden name was sanderson. i guess it could have been her married name? and the son was registered under her husband's name?

                pearl seems to have been a scandalous woman! twice divorced, she seems to have found happiness with arthur.

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                • #9
                  Does anyone know when divorce became common &/or acceptible in England? Does Ancestry have records of English divorces, and if so, up to what years?

                  I have a particularly troublesome pair of 3x ggrandparents, William Lake (about 1811- ) and Emma Court (about 1811 - 1895). Emma is buried in Ontario, Canada, but I have been unable to find any documents to trace them. To complicate matters, there are a pair with the same names & approximate dates who ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah who are NOT my ancestors.

                  I've recently been starting to wonder if there may have been a divorce involved as I can find no indication William immigrated to Canada, nor of his death; while I have found Emma with their son in Canada.
                  Last edited by Prairie Chicken; 18-02-12, 18:52. Reason: Type--William is a Lake & not a Court

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Prairie Chicken View Post
                    Does anyone know when divorce became common &/or acceptible in England? Does Ancestry have records of English divorces, and if so, up to what years?

                    I have a particularly troublesome pair of 3x ggrandparents, William Court (about 1811- ) and Emma Court (about 1811 - 1895). Emma is buried in Ontario, Canada, but I have been unable to find any documents to trace them. To complicate matters, there are a pair with the same names & approximate dates who ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah who are NOT my ancestors.

                    I've recently been starting to wonder if there may have been a divorce involved as I can find no indication William immigrated to Canada, nor of his death; while I have found Emma with their son in Canada.
                    If you look here http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ you can see some divorces not sure ancestry has them though.

                    Margaret

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by dicole View Post
                      <snip>
                      my gg gran remarried as a widow in 1918, but did not bother with getting a divorce as her first husband left for NSW in 1914 and I guess she considered herself widowed and he was not going to come back to reveal all. They were not living together in 1911, so the marriage breakdown was long term.

                      <snip>

                      Di
                      If they weren't living together in 1911, and he'd left for NSW in 1914, and she married in 1918, that's a 7-year spell of not cohabiting. She may have made only moderate effort to re-find him and had him declared dead? I think - unless I misunderstood my reading on the topic - that you were still supposed to get a notional divorce of some kind, but I'm not certain. It's something I keep meaning to do, in researching my paternal grandmother's life: she married in late 1923, after my grandfather had left in May 1916.

                      Christine
                      Researching: BENNETT (Leics/Birmingham-ish) - incl. Leonard BENNETT in Detroit & Florida ; WARR/WOR, STRATFORD & GARDNER/GARNAR (Oxon); CHRISTMAS, RUSSELL, PAFOOT/PAFFORD (Hants); BIGWOOD, HAYLER/HAILOR (Sussex); LANCASTER (Beds, Berks, Wilts) - plus - COCKS (Spitalfields, Liverpool, Plymouth); RUSE/ROWSE, TREMEER, WADLIN(G)/WADLETON (Devonport, E Cornwall); GOULD (S Devon); CHAPMAN, HALL/HOLE, HORN (N Devon); BARRON, SCANTLEBURY (Mevagissey)...

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Thanks Margaret. That looks like a useful website although I'd need a lot more than a hunch to pursue that route. It did answer one of my questions though:
                        Until the English Reformation in the sixteenth century, a valid marriage could only end if one partner died, or if the Pope granted an annulment.
                        Marriages could be 'set aside' if it could be proved they had never been valid, but it wasn't until 1857 that a divorce law was introduced in England. Even then, divorce was only within reach of the rich and influential until well into the twentieth century.
                        In practice people in unsatisfactory marriages found various ways to separate - through custom, the church courts, the common law courts and Parliament.

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