Marrying in a White Sheet.
t was not an uncommon circumstance in the last, and even in the early years of the present century, for marriages to be performed en chemise, or in a white sheet. It was an old belief, that a man marrying a woman in debt, if he received her at the hands of the minister clothed only in her shift, was not liable to pay the accounts she had contracted before their union. We think it will not be without interest to give a few authenticated instances of this class of marriages.
The earliest example we have found, is recorded in the parish register of Chiltern, All Saints’, Wilts. It is stated: “John Bridmore and Anne Selwood were married October 17th, 1714. The aforesaid Anne Selwood was married in her smock, without any clothes or headgier on.”
On June 25th, 1738, George Walker, a linen weaver, and Mary Gee, of the “George and Dragon,” Gorton Green, were made man and wife, at the ancient chapel close by. The bride was only attired in her shift.
Particulars of another local case are given in the columns of Harrop’s Manchester Mercury, for March 12th, 1771, as follows: “On Thursday last, was married, at Ashton-under-Lyne, Nathaniel Eller to the widow Hibbert, both upwards of fifty years of age; the widow had only her shift on, with her hair tied behind with horse hair, as a means to free them both from any obligation of paying her former husband’s debts.”
We have heard of a case where the vicar declined to marry a couple on account of the woman presenting herself in her under garment. Another clergyman, after carefully reading the rubric, and not finding anything about the bride’s dress, married a pair, although the woman wore only her chemise.
The following is taken from Aris’s Birmingham Gazette for 1797: