ABSTRACT
The Marriage Law Reform Association was formally initiated in London on 15 January 1851. The association led the campaign to legalise marriage with a deceased wife's sister (MDWS) in the second half of the century, helping to promote what seemed like a never-ending procession of bills. The 'misery of Scotch law', as the Conservative marriage practice for Pontefract, Richard Monckton Milnes, described it, was lamented in Parliament, the press and Victorian novels, as high-profile court cases brought the illegal status of MDWS in Scotland into the wider British political spotlight. The association promoted itself as a public information centre, offering itself as a reference point for inquiries about marriage law. Queen Victoria, in whose name British law was made, and who was head of the Church of England, could give her approval for La Trobe, who had defied the law, to act on her behalf anywhere in the British Empire.
