Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a common-law marriage, in which the partners have never actually gone through with a civil or religious ceremony.

1774		Westminster Mag. II 16: He had no inclination for a Broomstick-marriage.
1824		Coventry Herald 20 Aug. 1/2: The beadle said, that sort of marriage amounted to nothing more than a broomstick marriage.
1837		Brighton Gaz. 28 Sept. 4/5: Inscription over a Broomstick Marriage Shop: ‘Marrying done here in the Newest Style’.
1840		Yorks. Gaz. 5 Sept. 4/6: We always expected that the Broomstick Marriage Act would be treated as a dead letter by the people of this country.
1849		Bell’s Life in Sydney 24 Feb. 3/1: After he and his housekeeper severed the broomstick knot that had existed so long between them, it seemed Mr. W. got lonely.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 1 4/3: We will speedily tell her whether he be thinking of a wedding-ring or a broomstick.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 310: There was always a broomstick at hand, and they was both made to jump over it, and that was called a broomstick wedding. Without that ceremony couples weren’t looked on as man and wife. [Ibid.] I 353: I never had a wife, but I had two or three broomstick matches.
1881		Manchester Courier 8 Jan. 13/5: It was arranged they should have a broomstick wedding at Kendal and travel together as man and wife.
1894		Flag of Ireland (Dublin) 21 Apr. 5/7: If she is to have the legal position of a wife she must submit to ‘a broomsrtick marriage’.
1900		Portsmouth Eve. News 26 Nov. 3/8: [headline] A Broomstick Wedding.
[1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 69: You’ll pardon me, young fellow-me-lad, but I’ve bin’ comin’ a bloomer over the broomstick!’ ‘Weddin’?’ says he].
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 5/6: Broomstiock Brides hitched for a year, and / Which in course they dissolve.
1958		D. Reeve Smoke in the Lanes 63: This would still be known as a ‘broomstick marriage’—with no official gaujo marriage taking place.