THE STORIES BEHIND THE STORIES – KINDRED AND AFFINITY

My father’s family is not so squeaky clean when it comes to its family history. After researching and revealing my mother’s family scandals, I thought it only fair to delve into Dad’s family. I’m nothing if not fair… I knew that his grandfather had married sisters. My grandmother, Grandma Toadle, and my Great-Aunt Grace had the same father but their mothers were sisters. Nothing too strange about that, except… when he married Aunt Grace’s mother, Annie, the degrees of Kindred and Affinity banned a man marrying his dead wife’s sister.

Interesting. Kindred are those related to you by blood, whereas affinity are those related to you or your spouse by marriage. The rather weird logic for this ban had something to do with the way women were perceived as not having a separate identity from their husbands. This rather arrogant male view prevented wives from having the vote or being able to own property for years, and anything a woman took to a marriage became the husband’s property, including herself. In this case, it meant that a sexual relationship with a sister-in-law was incestuous, despite there being no blood relationship.

So, was the second marriage legal? It was very common back then for women to die in childbirth and leave a husband with children to raise. It was also very common for the deceased woman’s sister to step in to care for the children and look after the widower. These women gave up their own chance of marriage and children to be good Samaritans for their dead sisters. Inevitably, relationships bloomed and illegitimate children were born. Eventually, the powers that be recognised the sacrifice and the number of children born out of wedlock and allowed the marriages, so legitimising the relationships, but it must have been difficult for those couples struggling with grief, emerging emotions, and a harsh law.

I tried to put myself in my great-grandparents shoes and, after researching my family history, wrote Kindred and Affinity – though I apologise to the departed for probably showing them in the wrong light! I was halfway through writing my take on the story when I realised I had known Annie Underwood, my g-grandmother’s sister who raised my grandmother as her own. I remember her as Auntie Annie, a little old lady in a wheelchair, who was fetched from her home in Woodend every year for our Boxing Day family get togethers, and I had no idea then that she was Aunt Grace’s mother. She died when I was seven years-old.

http://mybook.to/KindredandAffinity