Fleet Marriages
During the medieval period, all that was required to marry was that a man and a woman declared themselves bound to each other in front of witnesses. No priest was necessary, although it was generally accepted that a wedding blessed by the church was beneficial. As time progressed, this old-fashioned way caused problems: the main one being women and young people, both boys and girls being coerced or forced into marriage for the profit of their families, or future spouses. The Marriage Act of 1696 made it impossible to get married without banns or a special license, except within the Liberty (or Rules as it is sometimes known) of the Fleet Prison. This included the pubs and inns, some which specialized in services and had their own marriage certificates printed up (as in the image: the Ditch Side, what a romantic location).
The Fleet was a debtors' prison, and had many noble and famous inmates during its long history. Various bylaws made prosecution of Fleet clergy impossible, and so the Liberty of the Fleet became the Elvis Chapel of London. It was possible to walk in off the street and be married legally, at very little cost. By the 1740s more than half of all London weddings were celebrated within the Fleet's boundaries. Thomas Pennant's Account of London in the 1790s records on Fleet Street 'the frequent sign of a male and female hand enjoined with "Marriages performed within" written beneath.' It was possible to be in, sign and get out in under fifteen minutes, as the mammoth number of records for the period shows: over a quarter of a million in fifty years. Don't be fooled into thinking these people were impulsive children either: the average man was 29 and the average girl 23. Fleet marriages were particularly useful for a large number of couples, and for varying reasons.
Immigrants were arriving from all over Europe. Some of them had reached London with little or nothing. They wanted to get established as quickly as possible, and had met a nice girl from the same community, but they were not yet part of the congregation of the strict French churches, who required serious attendance and commitment in order to conduct a marriage service. In the rush to find lodgings, food and work, church-going had fallen by the wayside, but they still wanted to make sure their marital status was clear in their new country, and many of the names in the records are French, with their origins such as Normandy or Nimes, noted. The Fleet was also handy for soldiers and sailors with limited time in which to get married and group weddings were common amongst ship-mates or poorer regiments, with local pubs such as the infamous Belle Sauvage holding set price receptions for the happy, and no doubt very raucous couples. Lack of parental consent must also have been a driving force behind some of the Fleet weddings, but the Fleet priests did conduct services for abductors and their captives, for an inflated fee I'm sure.
Another significant factor in these weddings is that people did separate from partners and spouses. Many didn't bother to marry, but lived together and had children as if they had married. When their differences became insurmountable, they moved on. The idea that marriage was an inescapable trap during the 18thC is a modern one. (Only the aristocracy were stuck with their spouses, who had usually been carefully chosen with an eye to investment and stability, rather than marital harmony. They were not expected to stay faithful.) Bigamy does appear in the courts, but usually only when a husband has deserted one partner for another, leaving the original one in financial trouble, and not moving far enough away to avoid detection. In the Georgian period, it really was possible to leave one place and life behind, and start again. A man of thirty arriving in London from Cornwall, Lincolnshire, or Stafford for example, would be completely untraceable provided he disclosed his parish of birth or marriage to no one, and that he was not recognised in the street. Therefore, he would be 'free' to marry and start over again. An appealing idea, from time to time.
In 1753, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act was passed, bringing the rules about parental consent for the under 21s and stricter guidelines for the reading of the banns, licences and church celebration. The Liberty of the Fleet was not exempt. It did not come into force until the end of the day on 24th of March 1754, when the Fleet Chapel recorded 'near a hundred pair had been joined together' in a single day.
