 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
145
blackboard above the anvil. "And would you like to see your name there Miss R?" She would.
So they were married. He was 14, she 19. Her people were amazed. A church wedding
followed. Five years and 2 daughters later (my mother, age 2, was No 2), they came to
Australia.' ¦.
Legend has made the couple younger than they were, but the age difference was actually
greater. Richard's 18th birthday had only recently occured - he was baptised on 26 September
1829 - and Elizabeth was actually 25. She was born in Carlisle in March 1822. The fact that the
Gretna wedding took place on the anniversary of Richard's baptism (on 26 September 1847)
can hardly be a coincidence. Perhaps Richard viewed that date as his birthday. However, there
is some uncertainty about the date, as although the big family bible records the marriage as
having taken place on 27 September, the Gretna certificate is dated the 26th. But it did take
place, and no doubt Elizabeth's parents were more than amazed.
Another legend claims it was she who dared the tiny teenage apprentice into writing their names
on the blackboard. Bold girl! And she was bigger than him! But she was getting on (she was
25) and may have resourcefully seized this opportunity to save herself from being left on the
shelf.
Gretna Green was a small village some nine miles north of Carlisle and across the border in
Scotland. Its popularity as a place for clandestine or runaway weddings dated from 1754, when
the English Marriage Act decreed that only registered church weddings were legal and that
persons under the age of 21 could not marry without parental consent - a law that endured until
1970, when the age limit was lowered to 18. As Scottish law allowed persons aged 16, or
sometimes less, to marry, many young couples eloped thither to wed. Not all were heiresses or
young. In 1816 the Lord Chancellor, Lord Erskine, aged 66 and disguised as an old lady to
avoid detection, wed his mistress at Gretna Green. Another Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham
(who had also got married there) legislated in 1856 (perhaps regretting his folly) that couples
should reside in Scotland for three weeks before they could wed.
Richard and Elizabeth were married 'agreeable to the laws of Scotland' as their certificate states
- by John Linton, who was not a blacksmith, as traditionally supposed, but a self-proclaimed
priest. In 1825, grasping a golden opportunity, he had turned the rundown Gretna Hall into a
modest hotel and marriage centre, where he performed more than a thousand marriages before
his death in 1851. He provided Richard and his bride with a showy certificate, headed Kingdom
of Scotland. Both signed their names as 'witnesses' - as did Mr Linton and his wife.
Once Elizabeth's parents had ceased to be amazed at her sudden union with the 18-year-old
stonemason, a church wedding soon followed - no doubt at Mr and Mrs Ryder's insistence.
This second ceremony, which was attended by Richard's older brother, William Robert, a 20-
year-old carpenter, who must have been working in the area at the time, took place in a church
in Carlisle on 13 November 1847.
148
Interestingly, this date is not the one given in the family bible for the marriage, which places it in
September. Clearly the Gretna date meant the most to the couple concerned.
It seems that soon thereafter Elizabeth's parents settled in Edinburgh. An old litho plate is
described 'George Ryder, Hat Manufacturer, 59 Pleasence, Edinburgh'; and we know that the
 |