General, Women's History

Couple Beggars in Ireland

Within a context of relatively low levels of interference from Church and State, the urban lower classes often determined their own regulatory mechanisms for marriage that were shaped by their local contexts. In both Dublin and, in most Presbyterian Irish towns including Belfast, couple beggars were popular, and they offered a range of services, including marriage and divorce. Couple beggars were usually ministers (of a variety of denominations) that had been defrocked and made a living performing church rites for a fee that usually undercut that demanded by legitimate ministers. In addition, ministers from smaller sects, such as Dr Schulze in Dublin, who was variously known as the ‘German’ or ‘Dutch’ minister, and was minister of the Lutheran Church in Poolbeg Street, Dublin, might perform this service. Schulze was only licensed to marry his own congregation, but his registers show him to have married over 6,000 couples between 1806 and 1837. His surviving registers show him performing at least one marriage a day, and on some days as much as sixteen. From as early as the 1780s, the Catholic Church, both in Northern Ireland and in Dublin, was concerned with the number of irregular marriages performed by couple beggars and discussed ways of managing the phenomenon. Both the Armagh and Dublin Roman Catholic diocesans performed investigations into the state of the problem, which was of particular concern to the Irish Catholic Church as they still accepted irregular marriages as valid.

Yet, while priests were disturbed by this phenomenon, they failed to appreciate that it operated with some community regulation. Couple beggars were usually recognised members of the community, operating in particular areas of town. In Dublin, in the early nineteenth century, they included Rev Schulz and also James Woods of Smithfield. When Woods died, there was an announcement in the newspaper, and a few weeks later, the Rev Stennet or Stenson not only took on his business, but did so from the same address as Woods, with Mrs Jane Woods as his assistant. Mrs Woods testified in one bigamy case that Mr Stennet was her lodger. A year later, the Stennet-Woods partnership had broken up and Stennet, described in this instance as a clergyman in full orders, summoned Jane for ‘illegally detaining a door label bearing his name’, which he alleged was his property. During the court case, he described how he now operated his business from Brunswick Street, but Jane continued to carry on business passing off another man as the Rev Stennet to unsuspecting parties. Possibly the most interesting part of this exchange, however, is the way that Stennet used both the magistrate’s court and court journalist, who reported proceedings in the local paper, to both legitimise his operations and to advertise his change of address. Couple beggars also operated in Belfast and many other towns in Northern Ireland. This included the defrocked Catholic priest McCarey and the degraded clergyman Mr Todd in Belfast, another Catholic priest McArdle in Armagh, and a minister named Kelso in Lisburn.

Despite the concerns of all the major Churches with irregular marriage, the use of couple beggars demonstrates the continuing importance of a religious ceremony to the poor in marking a legitimate marriage. Moreover, couple beggars provided marriage certificates to women, which were used as evidence of respectability. Poor women appeared to carry their certificates with them, so that in 1832, when one woman accused her husband of bigamy and was asked for her certificate by the magistrates, she replied that she had it but ‘it is almost gone having hard usage over the years’. The second wife interrupted her at this point to flourish her own certificate, announcing ‘’There […] is my right and title to him and never will I give you up, Paddy darlint’. Similarly, in 1839, when a man named Grogan proffered a complaint for assault against a woman who called herself Mrs Grogan, his second wife also came to court, leading to the following exchange:

 Mr Duffy [the magistrate]- who is the other woman you have with you?

 I am Mrs Grogan, your worship, said the lady with apparent triumph.

You, Mrs Grogan retorted the other with a contemtuous look. Where’s your certificate of marriage? I was married to him before he saw your ugly face, as this will show, producing the certificate.

Yes I am, replied her antagonist, and if you want to know where mine is, I tell you that the day I was married in Smithfield by a rale protestant clergyman, after getting it and putting it into my pocket, I went to smoke, and then put the pipe in along with it. It was burned in that way and other things which I thought more of; but a copy if kept in the Castle and the Lord Lieutenant will give it to you any time you wish. 

As is hinted at here in the second Mrs Grogan’s comment about ‘other things which I thought more of’, the marriage certificate became a symbol of the legitimacy of the marriage, an idea that was reinforced by magistrates who required it for bigamy prosecutions or claims for desertion. The state then reinforced the legitimacy of the couple beggar marriage.

Couple beggars were not unique to Ireland and were popular in Scotland and other parts of the world. Katie Barclay is a historian of marriage at Queen’s University, Belfast.

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