Post
by Montrose Budie » Thu Apr 01, 2010 6:02 pm
From 1855 onwards, as part of the statutory birth registration process in Scotland, there was no requirement to produce any documentary evidence of the stated marriage. It's a common misconception that such evidence was required at the time of registration of a birth.
OK, in a small rural parish the registrar, especially if he was the minister or the session clerk, might raise an eyebrow, or two!, if he didn't recognize the details of the 'claimed' marriage, but there wasn't anything he could do about it, i.e. he couldn't demand to see the marriage lines, the church evidence of a marriage, before completing the birth registration; never mind that a couple could easily claim that they had been married in different parish.
In a city registration district, of course, there was very little possibility of such "raised eyebrows".
In other words, a registrar just had no option but to believe what he was told.
This in the whole context, of course, that a so-called irregular marriage was quite legal in the eyes of Scots Law.
Something around 15%, or higher, - how much higher is not known, - of marriages at that time were irregular. That figure is based on the marriages later entered into the Register Books of Marriage following a court process leading to confirmation of the irregular marriage. This figure was regularly reported in the annual report of the Registrar General.
The missing statistic is just how many irregular marriages never led to such a court process of confirmation, so never turned up in the Register Books of Marriage.
So, we have here two possibilities.
1. The marriage was somehow missed off the index. A major problem here is that no specific district for the Glasgow marriage is given in the 1884 birth record for Michael, such as, for example, "Clyde District", - see one of the other births on the 1884 page containing Michael's birth registration. There were many registration districts in Glasgow, and it is unlikely that GROS would be able to check them all.
(One indication that a marriage could be irregular can be that, in the registrations of the births of a number of children, the place and date of the marriage varies from one birth registration to another, as there wouldn't be a piece of paper that the couple could refer to.
Unfortunately, another frequent reason for such variations, in the date at least, is that it was the father who was the informant, with, from much experience, the father surprisingly often getting the date wrong.)
2. The marriage between John and Ann was irregular, most probably a marriage by declaration, not subsequently confirmed by a Sheriff Court or other court action, and thereby entered into the relevant Register Book of Marriages.
Again, when a death was registered there was no requirement that the informant should produce documentary evidence on the names of the spouse(s) of the deceased. The registrar had no option but to record what he was told by the informant, as here, in 1918, the widower, William RONALD, reported that his deceased wife had been first married to John O'Brien.
I recently registered the death of an uncle of my wife. The GROS website advised that the birth and marriage certificates relating to the deceased should (almost implying "had to be"!) be taken along to the local registrar's office, except I knew that this was not required !
What I did take along with me was the death certificate of the deceased's brother, my father-in-law, to ensure that I reported the parents' names correctly, but even this is not a legal requirement.
mb
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Well, I knew it wouldn't be, after all the past searches I have done with many combinations of wild cards and spellings!