Section 1 of the Age of Marriage Act 1929 (1929 Act) stated that ‘A marriage between two persons either of whom is under the age of sixteen shall be void’. It created an equal age of consent to marriage for both sexes and significantly raised the age of marriage for girls. Prior to the Act the minimum age of marriage was set in common and canon law, a system of laws and ordinances originating from the Christian church, at 12 for a girl and 14 for a boy with parental consent, and 21 without. It further strengthened that protection by making underage marriages void, not only voidable as they had previously been. The debates leading to the 1929 Act were particularly important as they were influenced by international and imperial concerns and themselves came to influence the discourse around child marriage in the British colonies. The reform in the UK was, for instance, closely related to similar attempts in India where women’s rights groups were also seeking to introduce a minimum age of marriage, culminating in the Child Marriage Restraint Act in India, also passed in 1929.
The full version of this landmark is written by Laura Lammasniemi and Kanika Sharma