‘If one wanted to marry in secrecy, perhaps being married already, pregnant, or in a hurry when a soldier or sailor had been posted abroad, this was the place to come… What a lustre could be given to a hitherto pedestrian family tree in finding an ancestor recorded here and how many hours could be spent wondering just what secret he or she had wished to conceal.’
The first in a series of transcriptions of the registers of clandestine marriages which took place in and around the Fleet Prison in London between 1680 and 1754. Mark Herber describes the fascinating history of these marriages in his introduction and introduces the two registers transcribed here, covering the periods November 1736 to January 1754 and November 1736 to July 1748. The registers are published with the author’s explanatory notes, page references for the original documents at the Public Record Office, and an index of places and surnames.
The author
About The author
Mark Herber is a solicitor who specialises in fraud investigations. He is a member of the Society of Genealogists, and has been tracing his family tree since 1979. He is the author of Ancestral Trails – the complete guide to British genealogy and family history, which won the 1997 McColvin prize for an outstanding work of refence.
