LONDON — The London police announced Thursday that three women had been rescued from a city home where they claim to have been held against their will for about 30 years, and that a married couple who lived there had been arrested.

A Malaysian woman, 69; an Irishwoman, 57; and a British woman, 30, were freed from the house in the Lambeth district in South London in October after one of the women contacted a charity that helps victims of forced marriage, the police said at a news conference. They said the youngest woman had apparently been held captive her entire life.

The two suspects, an unidentified man and a woman, both 67, were arrested Thursday morning and were being held in a South London police station pending charges. The British police generally do not identify suspects until they have been charged. The police would not say whether the couple owned the home, and they declined to elaborate on other details of the women’s ordeal or the arrests.

Although the captive women had enjoyed some “controlled freedom,” the police said, they had been forced to perform domestic tasks. Kevin Hyland, a detective inspector in the Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Unit, said most of their days were probably spent indoors, though it remained unclear under what conditions and whether they had been held in more than one house. They did not appear to be related, the police said.