London - Middlesex Trees

On the Certificates of both of Harriette's marriages her father was named as Thomas Knight, a Hair Dresser.

On 9 Oct 2022 Graham L wrote:

Harriet and Frederick's brother William were recorded as man and wife in the 1871 Census, which at the time was not true under the canon law then applying. In 1891 Harriet was recorded as a widow.

However, William was far from dead and had married Alice Filmer in 1877. He did not die until July 1896, Alice not until 1928. We had presumed that William and Harriet had discovered, or been advised, that their marriage was not valid and had gone their separate ways.

But then the marriage of a woman to her dead husband's brother was made legal in 1921 by the Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act which extended the provisions of the 1907 Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act and validated all such previous marriages.

Fortunately Professor Rebecca Probert, whose book 'Marriage Law for Genealogists' is the source to consult, has advised that: 'the legislators responsible for creating the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act, 1907 included an important qualification to the provision retrospectively validating such marriages, stating that 'Provided also that in case, before the passing of this Act, any such marriage shall have been annulled, or either party thereto (after the marriage and during the life of the other) shall have lawfully married another, it shall be deemed to have become and to be void upon and after the day upon which it was so annulled, or upon which either party thereto lawfully married another as aforesaid'.

So the marriage of William and Harriet was void at the time it was entered into, then retrospectively validated in 1921 - but only until William's marriage to Alice, from which point it was void.