A knobstick wedding is the

forced marriage Forced marriage is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without their consent or against their will. A marriage can also become a forced marriage even if both parties enter with full consent if one or both are later force ...

of a pregnant single woman with the man known or believed to be the father. It derives its name from the staves of office carried by the

church warden A churchwarden is a lay official in a parish or congregation of the Anglican Communion or Catholic Church, usually working as a part-time volunteer. In the Anglican tradition, holders of these positions are ''ex officio'' members of the parish b ...

s whose presence was intended to ensure that the ceremony took place. The practice and the term were most prevalent in the United Kingdom in the 18th century. Motivation for these arrangements was primarily financial – local parishes were obliged to provide relief for single mothers under the laws regarding "poor relief". After the passing of the

Bastardy Act Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as ''b ...

in 1733 it became the responsibility of the father to pay for the maintenance of the child. Local authorities therefore encouraged the woman to enter into a marriage with the person presumed to be the father in an attempt to reduce their spending and shift the responsibility to the identified man. On some occasions the parish would pay the man to marry the girl, while there are also accounts of more aggressive tactics. In one case, recorded in the 6 October 1829 edition of ''The Times'', a man was coerced into marrying the woman he was accused of making pregnant. The authorities, referred to as the "parish overseers", threatened to hang him if he did not go through with the arrangement. Feeling that he had no option he agreed to the marriage and the pair were wed. However, those responsible for forcing the partnership were later called to face charges of "fraudulently procuring the marriage". The practice of forcing a man to marry a woman whom he had made pregnant is also known as a "

shotgun wedding A shotgun wedding is a wedding which is arranged in order to avoid embarrassment due to premarital sex which can possibly lead to an unintended pregnancy. The phrase is a primarily American colloquialism, termed as such based on a stereotypical ...

". Knobstick weddings, however, more usually refer to those arrangements forced by a local parish.

References

{{Wedding Marriage Wedding Forced marriage

See also

References