Over the next 18 months, we’ll be working in close partnership with The National Archives (TNA) to carry out the project ‘A New Methodological Approach to the History of Divorce’. TNA houses the records of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes from 1858-1875 and its later iteration as the Supreme Court of Judicature, Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division from 1875-1970. Within the J77 Series at The National Archives, Kew there are nearly 5000 boxes filled with multiple individual case files numbering nearly 125,000 dating from 1858 to 1970. Once you start delving inside, they’re a rich source of information for academics working in diverse fields such as history, human geography, linguistics, criminology, psychology, childhood studies, social sciences, and for family historians and genealogists wanting to find out more about their ancestor’s lives. If you’re interested in looking at these records, every case file for the years between 1858-1918 has been digitised and are easily available on Ancestry (charges apply) or they can be viewed in person for free at TNA with a Readers Ticket. If you want to see divorce case files from 1919 onwards, you’ll have to book a trip to The National Archives, Kew to view the original documents.
The National Archives also have an Index (reference J78) of the Divorce Court records from 1858 to 1945 and 1950 to 1958, which provides summary details of the cases across 42 volumes. Unfortunately, not all Divorce Court records have survived, and the rate of survival has decreased as the years have passed. According to The National Archives Research Guide on Divorce, from 1858 to 1927 almost all divorce case files have survived, but from 1928 to 1937 only the case files for the 80 percent of all divorces where the petition was filed at the Central (Principal) Registry have survived. In 1927 new legislation was introduced, allowing divorce petitions to be filed at selected District Registries across England and Wales, improving access to divorce, particularly for the working classes. Very few of the divorce cases which were filed at these District Registries (about 20 percent of all divorce petitions) have survived, meaning that they’re not available in the J77 Series or summarized in the J78 Index.
As we discussed in one of our previous blogs which introduced you to the Divorce Court, a variety of different types of matrimonial causes could be pursued there. So, even if you find an ancestor has been involved in a case at the Divorce Court, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was a divorce. Having said that, divorces were the most common type of case heard in the Divorce Court, but they also dealt with applications for nullity of marriage, judicial separation, decrees for restitution of conjugal rights, protection orders, decrees of legitimacy, and appeals. In future blogs we’ll be exploring these different types of cases in more detail so you can understand what they were, and the grounds on which they could be granted.
Hopefully this short blog has been a helpful introduction about what Divorce Court records have survived and how to access them for your own research, whether that’s for academic study or to explore your own family history. In our next blog we’ll be looking at what a divorce case file might contain, including a detailed look at the front cover which provides a summary of the cases information.
Make sure to follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @Divorce_History , Threads, Instagram or Facebook where we’ll regularly post news about the project, and links to the blogs on the projects website.
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