Living in Sin
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin :
Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England, Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
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in
GENDER HISTORY
Series editors:
Pam Sharpe, Lynn Abrams, Cordelia Beattie and Penny Summerfield
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The expansion of research into the history of women and gender since the
1970s has changed the face of history. Using the insights of feminist theory
and of historians of women, gender historians have explored the configuration
in the past of gender identities and relations between the sexes. They have
also investigated the history of sexuality and family relations, and analysed
ideas and ideals of masculinity and femininity. Yet gender history has not
abandoned the original, inspirational project of women’s history: to recover
and reveal the lived experience of women in the past and the present.
The series Gender in History provides a forum for these developments. Its
historical coverage extends from the medieval to the modern periods, and its
geographical scope encompasses not only Europe and North America but
all corners of the globe. The series aims to investigate the social and cultural
constructions of gender in historical sources, as well as the gendering of
historical discourse itself. It embraces both detailed case studies of specific
regions or periods, and broader treatments of major themes. Gender in
History titles are designed to meet the needs of both scholars and students
working in this dynamic area of historical research.
Living in sin
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:30.
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Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
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LIVING IN SIN
COHABITING AS HUSBAND AND WIFE
IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
Ginger S. Frost j
j
Manchester University Press
Manchester and New York
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:30.
Copyright © Ginger S. Frost 2008
The right of Ginger S. Frost to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmil an
175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10010, USA
Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press
University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mal ,
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 0 7190 7736 4 hardback
First published 2008
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Edited and typeset
by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscal , Lancs
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain
by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
page vii
Introduction
1
1 Cohabitation, illegitimacy, and the law in England, 1750–1914
9
2 Violence and cohabitation in the courts
32
3 Affinity and consanguinity
52
4 Bigamy and cohabitation
&n
bsp; 72
5 Adulterous cohabitation
96
6 The ‘other Victorians’: the demimonde and the very poor
123
7 Cross-class cohabitation
148
8 Radical couples, 1790–1850
169
9 Radical couples, 1850–1914
195
Conclusion
225
Bibliography
236
Index
255
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:30.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:30.
Acknowledgements
Having worked on this project for over a decade, I owe more debts than I can possibly
repay. I want to thank the anonymous readers for Manchester University Press and
the entire staff there. I am also deeply grateful to my wonderful mentors, Marty
Wiener, Martha Vicinus, and John Gil is, who never hesitated to give support, advice,
and letters when needed. I’m particularly indebted to the two readers of the original
900-page manuscript, Gail Savage and George Robb, who helped plan the necessary
cuts and who, for some reason, are stil friends with me. I also thank commentators at
various meetings where I gave papers, too numerous to specify, and the readers of
separate chapters, including Julie Early, Rod Phillips, and Nancy Fix Anderson. My
colleagues at Samford University, especial y the chair, Dr John Mayfield, offered
much support and encouragement. Similarly, I also want to thank the 2002–03
fellows of the National Humanities Center, particularly the Victorianists: Harriet
Ritvo, John Kucich, Diane Sadoff, Mol y Rothenberg, and Jonathan Riley. Joshua
Bearden put together the Bibliography, and for that I am grateful. Final y, for intel ectual
and practical support while in England, I thank John and Sue Stewart.
I also owe much to the librarians at many institutions, including the British
Library; National Archives (Kew); University College, London; Bishopsgate
Institutional Reference Library, London Metropolitan Archives; British Library of
Political and Economic Science; Institute of Advanced Legal Studies; the Institute
of Historical Research; University of Michigan Library; Duke University and Law
Libraries; Lambeth Palace Archives; National Research Library, Chicago; Centre for
Northwest Regional Studies, Lancaster University; Bodleian Library; the Women’s
Library, London Metropolitan University; and, especial y, the National Humanities
Center, Triangle Park, NC. Anyone who has spent a year at the NHC knows how
helpful and supportive the staff is, and my year was certainly no exception. I also
received crucial monetary support from Judson College, Samford University; the
National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Rockefeller Foundation, which
funded my sabbatical year at the NHC.
The following works have been previously published and are part of this
manuscript, and I thank the publishers for permission to include any copyrighted
materials here. These include the following: ‘ Through the medium of the passions
: cohabitation contracts in England, 1750–1850’, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual
Consortium on Revolutionary Europe (1994), 181–9; ‘Bigamy and cohabitation in
Victorian England’, Journal of Family History 22 (1997), 286–306; ‘ He could not hold
his passion : domestic violence and cohabitation in England, 1850–1900’, Crime,
History & Societies, 12 (2008), 25–44; and ‘ Love is always free : Anarchism, free
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
unions, and Utopianism in Edwardian England’, Anarchist Studies, forthcoming.
Final y, thanks to my support system of friends and family, especial y my
mother. I could not have gotten through this long process without you.
vii
j
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:30.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:30.
Introduction
In July 1875, George Henry Lewes, a man of letters and a scientist,
accepted an invitation to a garden party which the Queen of Hol and
attended. During the course of the afternoon, Lewes had a conversation
with the monarch. She complimented his writings, then added, ‘as to your
wife’s – all the world admires them’.1 What is startling about this story was
that Lewes’s legal wife, Agnes, had never written a book in her life. Instead,
the queen referred to Lewes’s cohabitee, Marian Evans (George Eliot), with
whom he had lived for seventeen years. Nor was the Dutch queen unique
in her sympathy. Queen Victoria, a byword for prudery, nevertheless let
Eliot know how much she enjoyed her books, and acquired the signatures
of both Lewes and Eliot for her collection. Princess Louise, her daughter,
attended a party with the couple in 1878 and talked privately with Eliot
for some time.2 Though Eliot was exceptional, her experience – along
with many others – indicates that the Victorian attitude to unmarried
cohabitation was not one of blanket condemnation. Instead, it was complex
and contingent on many factors.
Although the large number of cohabiting couples in England dates
only from the 1970s, free unions are at least as old as marriage itself. In the
nineteenth century, the choice to cohabit rather than marry crossed classes
and regions and revealed conflicting motives and desires between the
genders. It also problematised the whole notion of ‘marriage’ and ‘family’,
and the state’s role in these institutions. As Chapter 1 will make clear, the
law of marriage in England changed several times over the course of the
century, but was based primarily on the Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753.
The state took over the definition of marriage and most of the adjudication
of marriage cases at that point, and even more so after the Divorce Act
of 1857. Though the law never recognised common-law marriage as a
legal status, the English courts nevertheless dealt with such relationships
repeatedly. The civil courts decided disputes over bonds and wil s, while the
criminal side oversaw bigamy trials and ins
tances of violence. The Victorian
courts’ reaction to these relationships combined official disapproval with
pragmatic acceptance. Such complications were almost inevitable, since
these relationships had all the roles of spouses but no legal sanction. In
the end, the issue boiled down to the definition of marriage – as a status, a
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
sacrament, an institution, and/or a relationship.
The legal difficulties posed by cohabitation are therefore examined
j
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
living in sin
in the first two chapters of this study, but most of the book examines the
cohabiting couples themselves, including their interaction with each other,
their families, and wider society. Though cohabitees were a small minority
of couples, their experiences highlight important issues in family history,
because those on the margins of society offer a unique perspective on
the ‘norm’. In particular, these couples threw into disarray the traditional
definition of marriage. Most of them insisted that they were married in
all important respects. They fulfilled spousal duties, shared the same last
name, reared children, and had lifelong commitments. In short, they
defined marriage as a relationship, an idea, or an act of wil . What, then,
was the exact difference between cohabitees and spouses? Cohabitation’s
differences from, as well as its similarities to, marriage is a major theme of
this book.
Second, this work stresses the consequences of irregular cohabitation.
For example, cohabitees offer new ways to look at the roles of kin, neighbours,
and wider society in domestic life. Though their reactions differed by
class, not all families rejected cohabitees as ‘fallen’. Many otherwise strict
moralists made exceptions, as in marriages with a deceased wife’s sister. In
addition, these couples had several special difficulties which forced them