Perhaps I should have said that ti was teh 1920s/1930s that this law was passed. And even then, another proviso was that if a couple married and thtey had had children prior to the marriage, they had to have been free to marry each other at the time of the child's birth. So a married man who had a child with anoher woman, even if he got a divorce and later married the mother, could not legitimise his child. I dont think that law was chagned till the 1950s.