More mysterious marriages

[Barmaid]

Dot, thanks very much for your helpful suggestions on my odd marriage question. This next one is worse (but a different branch of my family completely)! Am I descended from marital miscreants?!

My great great grandmother married her husband in 1870 (lets call him Mr Smith). Children followed in 1871, 1873, 1879 and 1886. However, all was not well. In the 1891 Census, she is (unusually, it seems) listed at the bottom of the family group, almost as an afterthought. In 1895 (or thereabouts) she married for a second time (1st hubby was still very much alive and kicking) to Mr Jones. Not sure what happened to her second husband, but in 1900, a marriage takes place between her and hubby no 3, and in the registers she was using the name Jones. A year later, a further entry appears in the registers for her, again to hubby number three, but this time under BOTH her maiden name and first married name (Smith). What on earth is going on?! Of course, I have no idea whether she divorced husbands 1 and 2 or just carried on regardless. But the third (and or fourth) marriages seem a bit strange. Any ideas, please? I am waiting for the certificates to see if they shed any light, but I can't help thinking she may not have been terribly truthful!!!!

[dot.hawkes]

That is a really complex tale Barmaid, but are you absolutely sure you have the correct lady? Certainly it would have to be a very dangerous passtime to comit bigamy on such a prolific scale. In particular, if she has used her married name to register to marry, proof of her legal right to marry would have been requested from the Superintendant registrar.
Divorce is unlikely as it was costly, what I do wonder is if they were infact catholic or some other non-conformist religion and were possibly re-marrying into the Angliocan Church, or vice-versa, which is a religious ceremony and would appear in the church or chapel registers but not in the civil registration registers.
Potentially, through ignorance and oversight, she married hubby number 3 bigamously and the second time she married him was the legal one.
I would thuink that looking at her marital status on each certifivcate at the time of the ceremony would clarify, you do get the names entered to include the maiden name and the former married name, for instance, my Mother-in Law was married under the name Joan Webb formerly Vincent, Webb being the name of of her ex husband and Vincent her maiden name.
I am not saying that you have not uncovered a bigamous marriage (or two) but the penalty if charged and convicted was probably jail.
You do need to look at the certificates to discover what has gone on and also verify that you do definately have the correct lady and that her husbands were dead or out of the picture when she remarried. The marriages of her children would show whether their father was alive or dead, good luck with that one, let us all know what you uncover.