Martha Sutcliffe Hartley – Was She a Bigamist? – 52 Ancestors #7

February 26, 2014

Entry #7

Yesterday, I mentioned Martha Sutcliffe Hartley, wife of transported convicted, William Hartley.  Martha, it seems, is colorful enough to deserve a few paragraphs of her own.  As we now know, her first husband was convicted of feloniously possessing forged bank notes.  He may also have had a criminal history that included larceny and fraud. It is difficult to sort him out from the many other William Hartleys living in the vicinity of Bradford, Yorkshire, in the early 1800’s.

Martha could not have had an easy time of it after her husband was sent to Van Diemen’s Land for 14 years.  She was not only a mother to six children, but Frederick would have been just 9 months old when his father was arrested and hauled off to jail.  This means that Frederick never knew his father.  Martha, like so many women in her circumstances, had to make a living as a weaver.  Most likely, all of children went to work as soon as they were able to do anything useful.

As I mentioned before, Martha Hartley married James Garth on March 1, 1838.  She represented herself as a widow.  James was 10 years her junior and a widower with four children of his own.  How did Martha manage to remarry without being considered a bigamist?  I wondered if there were any special laws that may have allowed Martha to remarry while her husband was still alive, especially considering his absence.

Indeed, there was law that could have released her from her marriage vows:  “An Act to restrain all Persons from Marriage until their former Wives and former Husbands be dead [1604.]”  The pertinent part for Martha could have been:

Section 2, II states “II. Provided always, That this Act, nor any Thing therein contained, shall extend to any Person or Persons whose Husband or Wife shall be continually remaining beyond the Seas by the Space of seven Years together, or whose Husband or Wife shall absent him or herself the one from the other by the Space of seven Years together, in any Parts within his Majesty’s Dominions, the one of them not knowing the other to be living within that Time.”

In other words, Martha would have been free to marry after seven years.  But look at her marriage certificate:

 

 Martha remarried at five years and four months, far ahead of the allowable waiting period that would have annulled her first marriage.  Then by 1851, Martha was living separate from James Garth.  He still called himself married in the census, but Martha was once again purporting herself to be a widow.  She was working as a power loom weaver in a factory at the time.

I think Martha Hartley must have been something special. When she remarried, she was able to attract a much younger man.  If nothing else, she seems to have been a gutsy woman. At the age of 63, she embarked on a voyage to Australia, which must have taken some courage.

The evidence seems to indicate that Martha was a bigamist.  Who know?  Perhaps she really thought that her first husband was dead.  The irony of Martha’s conjugal status is that bigamy was a crime that was subject to punishment by transportation!