The laws relating to bigamy have changed over the centuries. Fairly constant, though, is the differing treatment of female and male bigamists. Rebecca Probert explains
Many of us may suspect we have a bigamist lurking in our family tree. There might be rumours, or a suspicious remarriage where we have not been able to trace the death of the first spouse. But not everyone who remarried during the lifetime of a spouse without first obtaining a divorce was risking prosecution. To gauge whether they were at risk – and what they were risking – we need to know when a remarriage would be a criminal offence and how it was punished. Both these things, as we shall see, changed over time. And although the law did not explicitly differentiate between male and female bigamists, there were some important differences in practice.
Our starting point is 1604, when bigamy was first made a criminal offence punishable by death in England and Wales. Crucially, the new Act contained various exemptions – for example, for those whose spouse had been ‘beyond the seas’ for seven years, or simply absent and not known to be alive during that time. In such cases, if the first spouse was in fact still alive, the second marriage would be void, but not an offence. Given the greater opportunities for men to travel, these exemptions may have benefited wives more than husbands. Also exempt were those who remarried after a ‘divorce’, which in this context meant simply an order from the church courts authorising a separation, rather than a decree terminating a marriage.
A One-Time Benefit
During the 17th century, acquittal rates were very high. Even if convicted, men could often avoid the death penalty by pleading ‘benefit of clergy’, which by this time required no more than the ability to read a verse of the Bible. Wives who remarried bigamously were in a riskier position, as it was not until 1691 that benefit of clergy was extended to them. It was only an exemption that could be pleaded once, though. In 1693, Mary Stokes, convicted of bigamy for a second time, made history as the last person to be sentenced to death for the crime at the Old Bailey.
Convicted bigamists who avoided the death penalty would still be branded on the hand with a red-hot iron, and branding continued to be the main penalty for bigamy for much of the 18th century
