From Good Time Girl to Damsel in Distress: Protecting the British War Bride in the United States, 1944–1950

Gail Savage

doi:10.3390/genealogy4040114

Abstract

During the Second World War, the United Kingdom became an epicenter of transnational, especially transatlantic, marriages, but not all these marriages proved successful. As one disappointed English war bride on her way back home expressed herself, she was “Too shocked to bring her baby up on the black tracks of a West Virginia mining town as against her own home in English countryside of rose-covered fences.” This essay examines the government program developed to provide financial aid and legal advice to British women estranged from or abandoned by their American husbands from the passage of the 1944 Matrimonial Causes (War Marriages) Act to its winding down in 1950. The analysis draws upon a wide range of documents to survey the formulation and implementation of the government response and to consider some illustrative cases dealt with by British consular officials in the United States. These examples illuminate the gap between human behavior envisioned by policy-makers and the more varied behavior encountered by those who carried out the duties charged to them. The cases thus represent the nexus between state intervention and the individual experience of larger-scale social dynamics set off by war and the global movement of populations.

Highlights

The war effort in Britain entailed long years of service abroad for thousands of men, evacuation of children from cities to the countryside, and the employment of women, even married women, in war work, putting considerable strain on marital and familial ties (Field 1990)
Officials worked to obtain maintenance for the illegitimate children fathered by American servicemen and to facilitate divorces initiated by British women who wished to bring their marriages to an end
Thousands of British women married foreigners during World War II. Their marriages occupied a liminal position between the family disruptions of the war and the post-war emergence of the companionate family ideal during the 1950s (Finch and Summerfield 1991; Collins 2003; Thane 2003; Langhamer 2006; Weeks 2007, pp. 23–56)

Summary

Introduction

The war effort in Britain entailed long years of service abroad for thousands of men, evacuation of children from cities to the countryside, and the employment of women, even married women, in war work, putting considerable strain on marital and familial ties (Field 1990). The analysis that follows first considers the response of the government to the growing problem of failed marriages between British women and American servicemen This draws upon a wide range of documentary materials to examine the discussions among officials at the relevant government departments, especially the Foreign Office, the Home Office, and the Lord Chancellor’s Office. Officials worked to obtain maintenance for the illegitimate children fathered by American servicemen and to facilitate divorces initiated by British women who wished to bring their marriages to an end These reports, which often included transcripts of correspondence by the parties themselves, provide rich documentation of the varied circumstances of the couples that came to the attention of consular officials and the difficulties raised by the refusal of so many to conform to official expectations. The documents preserve the voices of officials and those of the men and women whose plight attracted government attention, showing the ways in which they took an active role in their own lives, sometimes to the frustration of those who sought to help them

Saving the Wronged War Bride

Maintenance of Illegitimate Children

Divorce

Findings

Conclusions