"GordonD" wrote in message
...
"Nick Spalding" wrote in message
...
GordonD wrote, in
on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:59:27 +0100:

"S Viemeister" wrote in message
...
On 10/18/2012 8:56 PM, Arcadian Rises wrote:

Wasn't a brother supposed to take care, even marry, the widow of his
deceased brother?

In the Old Testament, yes. Not all that long ago in the UK, it was
against
the law to marry your deceased spouse's sibling.


How long ago was that? My grandfather's first wife died and he married
her
sister - that was in 1929.

It had been legal since 1907.

From Wiki http://morgue.anglicansonline.org/030817/

"Beginning in the 1860s, bills were introduced in Parliament annually to
allow marriage with a deceased wife's sister, but it wasn't until 1907
that the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act finally made it legal.
And not until 1921 (!) did the Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act
make marriage to a brother-in-law legal."


Thank you. It seems a rather odd thing to ban - presumably prior to 1907
if a couple were divorced it would be fine for the man to marry the
sister. What happened if the first wife dropped dead before the wedding?

Then presumably she wasn't a wife!

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