The historical source material on bigamy depicts an awful lot of weeping. Sometimes the tears are behind the scenes – the reaction of a deserted first wife or deceived second wife to the revelation of her husband’s crime.

On occasion they are tears of contrition, as the bigamist begs for forgiveness or at least not to be prosecuted. Although one unmoved 18th-century wife suspected her bigamist husband, William Bury, had just “spit on his fingers” to counterfeit tears and prosecuted him anyway.

And sometimes the tears are shed publicly, at the trial – reflecting fear of the potential punishment, or, for some, relief at an acquittal. Both reactions are understandable given that bigamy was potentially punishable by death when it was first made a crime in 1604.

While few were sentenced to execution, my research, published in my books Double Trouble and Double Lives, shows that bigamy was still harshly punished. Until the end of the 18th century, convicted bigamists were usually branded on their hands.

The early 19th century saw around a quarter of bigamists (254 people) being transported to Australia and even after that practice declined, sentences of imprisonment were rarely nominal. Thomas Hall, for example, cited by historian Lawrence Stone as having been........

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