2. REVISING INITIAL ASSUMPTIONS
• Original assumption that cohabitation had been
common in the past
• … disappeared upon inspection of the original
sources
• New resources now available in digitized form
• Legal
• Parliamentary
• Newspapers
• Marriage records
3. KEY POINT NO. 1: COMMON-LAW
MARRIAGE HAS NEVER EXISTED
• The ideas that before 1754 it was possible
to marry by a simple exchange of vows, or
that couples who lived together would be
presumed to have married…
• …derived from a nineteenth-century
American court misunderstanding English
precedents
5. KEY POINT NO. 2: COHABITATION WAS FAR
LESS COMMON IN THE PAST THAN NOW
• The standard view: in contrast to the 1950s
and 1960s… „earlier periods show greater
similarity in terms of cohabitation and
“illegitimacy” with recent decades‟
(Professor Albert Weale, preface to Happy
families? (British Academy, 2010))
7. THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL RESOURCES
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Dunkirk and Hernhill Kilsby
8. NEITHROP, 1851
• Occupied by the ‘poor and persons of bad character’
• Claimed that in Gould’s Buildings
‘five of the eight
houses were …
occupied by
cohabiting
unmarried couples’
9. IN REALITY…
• Actually only two out of eight at any given time
• Of the 847 households examined:
• 629, or (74%) headed by a couple
• Marriages traced for at least 95% and possibly 98.5%
10. „LIVING TOGETHER‟?
‘I know as much as one can know
such a thing – that she had not
lived with
S. during the time
of our acquaintance
– and that she had
had a good deal
of that same with me.’
11. MAYHEW‟S COSTERMONGERS
• ‘[o]nly one-tenth – at the outside
one-tenth – of the couples
living together and carrying
on the costermonging trade,
are married’.
• H Mayhew, London Labour
and the London Poor (1851)
12. THE COSTERMONGERS‟ RESPONSE
• „downright falsehood‟
• condemnation of „the conduct
of Mr Mayhew, in publishing
statements calculated to
prejudice a great body of
individuals struggling over all
difficulties to get an honest
living, without investigating
the character of his
informants, or requiring them
to substantiate such
statements.‟
14. KEY POINT NO 3: DATING THE
EMERGENCE OF THE COMMON-LAW
MARRIAGE MYTH
• Research has established that a
majority of cohabitants and the
population at large believe that there
is such a thing as „common-law
marriage‟ which gives them similar
rights as if they were married
15. HOW DID THE COMMON-LAW
MARRIAGE MYTH EMERGE?
• 1960s: term began to be applied to cohabitation
• Early 1970s; opponents of the „cohabitation rule‟
argued that this should not apply to all
cohabitants but only those living in „common-
law marriages‟
• Individuals began to ask what rights they have
as a result of their „common-law marriage‟
16. NEW RIGHTS AND HOW THEY WERE
REPORTED…
• Inheritance (Provision for Family and
Dependants) Act
• „[if] a Bill now going through Parliament were
law now, she would as a common-law wife
automatically be entitled to a share in a
“husband‟s” estate.‟
(Daily Express, 1975)
17. PROPERTY RIGHTS
• „“Security” for common-law wives‟ (The
Guardian)
‘Did you
Rings on their know, Olive
r, that I am
Fingers (1978) entitled to
a third of
your flat?’
18. BIRTHS OUTSIDE MARRIAGE, 1971-2001
300000
250000
200000
Same address
150000 Different address
Joint registration
100000 Sole registration
50000
0
1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001
19. SUMMARY
• English law never recognised common-law
marriage and cohabitation was vanishingly rare
in earlier centuries
• The extent of cohabitation was broadly
consistent with its legal treatment until the 1970s
• The emergence of the „common-law marriage
myth‟ in the late 1970s was followed by a
significant increase in cohabitation
