Nick Spalding wrote:
abc wrote,
on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:25:38 +0200:

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

"S 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 Wikihttp://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."

Was it a requirement for the former spouse to be deceased?
Couldn't you simply divorce your wife and marry her sister?
Or did that require a separate act perhaps?

The word 'Deceased' actually means something you know.

It certainly does. But it seems strange in the context.

In fact, a law to specifically allow something seems strange. Presumably
there was a previous law no.1 in effect to disallow such marriages, or
the act to allow them wouldn't have been needed in the first place.

Wouldn't the change then be better described as an abolition of law 1,
rather than as a new law allowing what law 1 forbade?

abc