To think very few women would marry their deceased sister’s widower?

[Albless]

My friend was always aware that his grandfather had been married twice, and that the first wife died. His grandmother was the second wife, and his DF was the only child of that second marriage. There were some children from the first marriage.

Some family history research has revealed that his grandfather’s first and second wives were sisters. Two years after the first wife died, the widower married his sister-in-law. The law allowing this to happen was only passed in 1907, about 20 years earlier.

My friend is not particularly interested in family history. But I was really taken aback when he said marrying a dead wife’s sister is probably more common now than it used to be!

I completely disagree - I think very few women would have any interest at all in marrying their brother-in-law if their sister died.

He thinks I’m wrong. I said I’d put it to MN.

AIBU?

This is hard for me since I don't have a sister...
I had (have) a foster sister & her fellow is very nice but he's chubby now, a biker who smokes weed. Not my type.

Looking at most the sister groups I know, they don't go for the same type, mostly. So most of them have other choices they prefer, is main thing.

It was very common in the past. I think there is some biblical interpretation about it being the responsibility of the brother to look after the widow.

It was pretty common for a widower to be married off the the nearest available single woman within a year, especially if he had children too. It was partly about respectability but also about financial need. A wife was cheaper than a servant.

So it wasn't really about sexual attraction, but marriages of convenience and indeed survival. There were not many alternative options available to most. Marriage was frequently about financial stability and division of labour rather than romantic love in a way that we don't appreciate today.

Having done a lot of family history, middle class widows who didn't marry quickly and didn't have a wealthy family to support them very quickly slipped into destitution - often for several generations. (If you were a working class woman you were already financially screwed and desparate and the workhouse may have been your alternative).

@Genevieva

Also, in the Old Testament there is something about an obligation to marry your deceased brother's wife. I was under the impression that this was the basis (along with international politics) of Henry VIII's marriage to his older brother's widow Catherine of Aragon.

Deuteronomy says that you must marry your brother’s widow, but Leviticus says that you must not and if you do you will not have children. Henry VIII referred to the latter in his case for annulment.

In some cultures it is common to marry the deceased's sister or cousins (also considered her sisters) or her niece (particularly brother's daughter). The thinking is that as they are the woman's sisters she will consider the children her own and will not abuse them. Also any children she may have will be closely related and almost full siblings.

My grandfather never lived to see my mum born, he was killed in action in WW2 just after she was born. He knew he had a daughter but died before any photos reached him.

My nan moved in with his family travelling from London to a Scottish farm. His younger brother promised to look after her and the baby but shortly after was also killed in the war.

A few years later she married the eldest brother who had been ordered to remain on the farm. They went on to have a son. So my mum and her brother are also cousins.

Took me a long time, as a youngster, to work out how a girl I went to school with had a Step mother and Aunt who were the same person.

i am sure it was pretty common.
hard to find a new partner, dont have to look too far

This is what happened to my grandma. She wasn't given a choice.

I split from my then husband (a long time ago), who worked in show business and had a lot of affairs. I left him and, not that long after that, he and my twin sister started living together. To this day she has never understood why I found this unacceptable. They weren't together for long, and she justifies it by saying she wasn' that bothered about him.

I was recently seeing someone whose wife died, and then pretty promptly he got together with the wife’s first cousin, who was very similar looking to his wife, just a younger version. They were together a few years.

My mother in law married her sister’s husband after the sister died. I was pretty shocked when I first found out and think it’s pretty odd but can understand how shared grief may contribute. I can’t imagine doing the same thing though, or if I died for my sister to marry my husband. They both seem very happy together so obviously worked out for them which is great but it seems a bit disrespectful to the sister’s memory. But I’m glad they worked out and I’m sure they were able to help each other through the hard times

Haven't rtft, but wouldn't it also have been quite difficult for a woman to be a single parent before the advent of the welfare state? So if there were kids and a woman was widowed then she'd have to find a new husband PDQ or fall into poverty? Conversely, wouldn't that mean that it would be seen as an honourable thing for a man to marry his deceased brother's widow? To save her and any nephews/ nieces from a life of poverty?

It has happened on several occasions in my ancestry. One was even more complicated:
A 2nd Great Aunt died and her sister then married the widower. He subsequently died and she then married his brother.
It was very common.

In my family tree I have a few first cousins who have married too including one set of Great Grandparents.

The most shocking thing to me is the frequency of having a child die and then, when the next one of the same sex came along, naming it the same. It's just something I think most people would find inconceivable today.

My mum and her cousin married 2 brothers. Not quite the same though!

None in my ancestry.

Would we think the same if it was a woman remarrying her first husband's brother?

I know two twin girls (identical) who married two twin boys (identical) and one of the girls had an affair with her twin's husband - they got divorced but all had children together it all got very, very messy.

It was only illegal in England between 1835 and 1907.
It may have been illegal but it took place regularly during that timeframe. It was done purely for practical reasons. If a woman had children she would need a provider, otherwise they would all have to go into the workhouse.

In the same way you will find in family history that if a mother died and they had a female child coming up to the age at which they could marry, as soon as they were of age, they would get married so that it became the responsibility of their husband to provide for them. This would also happen if there were no available suitors - often a male cousin would marry them.

My friend's grandmother married her dead husband's brother. It was about 1930 and in Balkans.
I don't know anybody nowadays.

My Dad's mother was married several times. She had all her children with one man, but when he died she remarried. Then when he died she married again. When HE died, she married his brother.

@IsaLain

I think I can beat that. Way back in the 1800's, one of my ancestors had a child with one sister, then a child with the other sister, then a child with the first sister again and a last child with the second sister again.

An historical Hugh Grant.

It is a bit like parents giving subsequent children the same name as a baby who has died.

The people we bought our house from his wife was the second sister. They were both widowed, retirement age and I guess it progressed from there. What was weird is that according to neighbours at get togethers they both talked about their first spouses a lot.

This happened with one set of my great-grandparents.

I don’t think it had anything to do with love. I think the children needed raising, poor people can’t hire someone to do that, and sending the children away to a female relative was not a good option with a loving father alive, so someone had to be moved in to care for them - the obvious someone was one who already loved them and was willing to do the job.

I also think far more people viewed marriage as a contract of convenience then than now, esp as you were unlikely to meet anyone outside your village, so had to pick one of the available candidates anyway, so this wasn’t the tragedy it might be viewed as now. It suited all parties.

Not exactly the same, but my dad married his best friend's sister, and then after she died he married his best friend's sister-in-law (the sister of that friend's wife). I used to find it strange (although all before I was born so none of my business!) but in reality I think people move in circles where you have common interests. Sisters are likely to be similar in outlook, so if you fall for one its not so odd to fall for the other.

OP’s argument is U because as alexdgr8 says, this was Henry VIIIth’s argument, for his own ends, and he was an all in nasty wanker!

My father had an affair with my mothers sister. It tore our family apart and repercussions are still felt today. My parents had 3 children and he went on to have 2 with my aunt. This was 1990 although the affair went on for years before. He has never married her though.