On 2011/05/22 10:05, nicholas wilson wrote: > The wedding took place in London in 1908, but that is the only connection > my question has with. the area. The printed announcements show the name > of the groom`s father but not his mother`s, and the bride`s late father`s > and her still living mother`s. > > Does the absence of the groom`s mother``s name indicate something. If she > was divorced from the father, would this be a reason for excluding her name, > or could her name have been excluded because she was already dead. I have > three separate announcements from three different sources and the groom`s > mother is excluded in each case so it obviously was not a typo error... I would have thought the mother had died. But, divorce is a possibility. The 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act allowed ordinary people to divorce. Before then, divorce was largely open only to men, and had to be granted by an Act of Parliament, which was hugely expensive, and therefore was also open only to the rich. (Long before then, of course, Henry VIII was granted a divorce by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and church courts retained the power to dissolve marriages.) Under the new law, women divorcing on the grounds of adultery not only had to prove their husbands had been unfaithful but also had to prove additional faults, which included cruelty, rape and incest. A private members' bill in 1923 made it easier for women to petition for divorce for adultery, but it still had to be proved. In 1937, the law was changed and divorce was allowed on other grounds including drunkenness, insanity and desertion. PS. The apostrophe character is not the one above the Tab key. It's next to the Enter key :-) -- Regards, Mike Fry Johannesburg