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Archiver > LONDON > 2000-10 > 0970497950


From: Eve McLaughlin <>
Subject: Re: [Lon] Marriage age?
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 15:45:50 +0100
In-Reply-To: <000301c02c6a$6e475ce0$6ee4ef9b@default>


In message <000301c02c6a$6e475ce0$>, Butcher
<> writes
>Hello everyone
>Eliza GILES christened at St Mary's Marylebone - 18 / 1/ 1807 - therefore
>she must have been born in 1806.

A baptism is only a baptism, and could have taken place at any time,
especially if the family were basically nonconformist at any stage.
So unless you have a positive statement of a birth date, suspect that
she was older. Only if there is a steady progression of children
baptised every two years can you suspect that her age definitely bears a
relation to her date of baptism.
>She married William BECKWITH 5 / 9/ 1820.
>Thus she was only 14 yrs old !

although it is technically possible for a girl to be married at this
age, the number of times it actually happened was minimal, for obvious
common-sense reasons.

>Was it common for people in those days to marry so young?

No - and if they did (usually in really aristocratic families and over
100 years before this)- the couple tended to be kept apart.

--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

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