4 The remaining case involved the murder of a male cohabitee by his partner’s two sons.
5 V. Bailey, This Rash Act: Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 125–30; C. Conley, The Unwritten Law:
Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 70–1.
6 R. Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy: The Home Office and the Treatment of Capital Cases
in Victorian Britain (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), p. 242.
7 G. Behlmer, Friends of the Family: The English Home and Its Guardians, 1850–1940
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 181–229; Conley, The Unwritten
Law, pp. 75–81; J. Davis, ‘A poor man’s system of justice: The London police courts in
the second half of the nineteenth century’, Historical Journal 27 (1984), 309–35.
8 The Times, 30 October 1862, p. 11; The Times, 5 July 1878, p. 12.
9 Conley, The Unwritten Law, pp. 72–5; Behlmer, Friends of the Family, pp. 198–213;
Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship, pp. 46–52; D’Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, p.
79; A. Ballinger, Dead Woman Walking: Executed Women in England and Wales, 1900–
1955 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 204–21.
10 National Archives (hereafter NA), CRIM 10/52, pp. 508–9 (first quote on p. 508); The
Times, 3 August 1863, p. 11; 17 August 1863, p. 11; 22 August 1863, p. 11 (for second
quote).
11 Abbot in Yorkshire Gazette, 5 August 1876, p. 4; 16 December 1876, p. 4 (for quote);
Taylor in Tonbridge Telegraph, 12 August 1893, p. 5. See also The Times, 7 July 1902,
p. 3.
12 NA, PCOM 1/69, pp. 681–3; Mulley in Lancaster Guardian, 26 October 1855, p. 9 (for
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
quote); 3 November 1855, p. 2; Wane in The Times 15 December 1864, p. 10. See also
The Times, 19 April 1869, p. 6; 20 April 1869, p. 9.
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violence and cohabitation in the courts
13 Hannah in The Times, 13 September 1856, p. 7; Leeds Intelligencer, 13 September 1856,
p. 8; Sabley in Northampton Daily Chronicle, 29 June 1893, p. 4.
14 D’Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, p. 68.
15 Lancaster Guardian, 14 April 1900, p. 6.
16 J. C. Wood, Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our
Refinement (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 37–8; 56–69; A. Davis, ‘Youth gangs,
masculinity and violence in late Victorian Manchester and Salford’, Journal of Social
History 32 (1998), 349–69.
17 The Times, 9 June 1870, p. 11. See also NA, HO 144/248/A54672; The Times, 29
September 1892, p. 7; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 1 October 1892, p. 5; 8 October 1892,
p. 7.
18 Sheilds in PCOM 1/84, pp. 647–8; The Times, 7 March 1863, p. 12 (for quote); MacDonald
in HO 45/9366/36100; Devonport Independent and Plymouth and Stonehouse Gazette, 4
July 1874, p. 7; 1 August 1874, p. 3 (for quote).
19 Lancaster Guardian, 28 July 1866, p. 3.
20 The Times, 6 August 1860, p. 10; Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 4 August 1860,
p. 2 (for quote). See also Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, pp. 338–9.
21 Mason in The Times, 11 December 1856, p. 9; Burch in CRIM 10/75, pp. 60–6; The
Times, 25 April 1885, p. 6; Dixon in The Times, 27 July 1860, p. 11; Yorkshire Gazette,
14 July 1860, p. 4. R. Smith, Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian
Trials (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), p. 153; D. Bentley, English
Criminal Justice in the Nineteenth Century (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998),
p. 18; Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, pp. 289–315; G. Frost, ‘“She is but a woman”:
Kitty Byron and the English Edwardian criminal justice system’, Gender and History
16 (2004), 538–60.
22 M. Wiener, ‘The sad story of George Hall: Adultery, murder and the politics of mercy
in mid-Victorian England’, Social History (1999), 174–95; and Men of Blood: Violence,
Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), pp. 123–69; E. Foyster, Marital Violence: An English Family History,
1660–1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 115–22.
23 Fleming in Newcastle Chronicle, 5 September 1856, p. 8 (for quote); The Times, 16
September 1856, p. 6; Brown in The Times, 23 May 1881, p. 12; Nottingham and
Midland Counties Daily Express, 23 May 1881, p. 3; 24 May 1881, p. 3 (for quote).
24 Conley, The Unwritten Law, pp. 79–81.
25 PCOM 1/69, pp. 681–3; Lancaster Guardian, 3 November 1855, p. 12; The Times, 26
October 1855, p. 9 (for quote).
26 PCOM 1/68, pp. 367–70; The Times, 2 February 1855, p. 10 (for quote); Chadwick,
Bureaucratic Mercy, pp. 309–13.
27 HO 144/236/A51714; Surrey Advertiser and County Times, 12 July 1890, p. 2 (for quote);
The Times, 14 July 1890, p. 6. See also The Times, 24 September 1874, p. 5; 29 October
1874, p. 11; Devonport Independent and Plymouth Gazette, 26 September 1874, p. 6.
28 The Times, 30 October 1862, p. 11; Lancaster Guardian, 9 June 1866, p. 8.
29 HO 45/9441/66322; The Times, 28 July 1877, p. 11; 16 August 1877, p. 6; Croydon
Journal, 19 April 1877, p. 3; 26 April 1877, p. 3; 26 July 1877, p. 3. Grove’s letter, dated
7 August 1877, is piece six in the Home Office file.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
30 HO 45/9464/75868; Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, 29 July 1878,
p. 3; Hawkins’s letter, dated 10 August 1878, is piece three in the file. For a case with
49
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living in sin
drunkenness, see HO 144/85/A7411; The Times, 29 July 1881, p. 10.
31 The Times, 10 August 1865, p. 12; 11 August 1865, p. 9; 15 August 1865, p. 3; 21
December 1865, p. 11; 22 December 1865, pp. 9–10; 12 January 1865, p. 10; 13 January
1865, p. 9. See also Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, pp. 239–45; and Smith, Trial by
Medicine, pp. 124–42.
32 E. Bowen-Rolands, Seventy-Two Years at the Bar: A Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1924),
pp. 64–7; quote from p. 67. Smithers in HO 45/9466/67890; The Times, 19 September
1878, p. 9; Denman’s letter is piece five in the file.
33 Jurors had to be £10 householders or £20 leaseholders in most places. Bentley, English
Criminal Justice, pp. 92–3; Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, p. 90; M. Wiener, ‘Judges
v. jurors: Courtroom tensions in murder trials and the law of criminal responsibility in
nineteenth-century England’, Law and History Review 17 (1999), 467–506.
34 HO 144/98/A16400; The Times, 9 May 1882, p. 7; 24 May 1882, p. 10. Clerk’s notes are
in piece one of the file.
35 HO 144/250/A55024
; The Times, 8 July 1893, p. 16; 10 July 1893, p. 12; 24 July 1893,
p. 9; quote from 10 July. Hawkins’s letter is in piece four in the file.
36 Fountain in PCOM 1/98, pp. 139–41; The Times, 9 June 1870, p. 11; Foster in Durham
Chronicle, 27 November 1895, p. 7; Quain in Shrewsbury Free Press and Shropshire
Telegraph, 27 March 1875, p. 2.
37 L. Parry (ed.), Trial of Dr. Smethurst (London: William Hodge & Company, 1931); The
Queen against Thomas Smethurst (London: Butterworths, 1859); R. Altick, Victorian
Studies in Scarlet (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1970), pp. 160–9; and B.
Cobb, Trials and Errors (London: W. H. Allen, 1962), pp. 144–62.
38 Parry, Trial of Dr. Smethurst, pp. 113–22, quote from p. 116.
39 Ibid. , p. 194.
40 Ibid. , pp. 235–59.
41 Ibid. , pp. 235–40; quote from p. 240.
42 C. Fairfield, Some Account of George William Wilshere, Baron Bramwell of Hever
(London: MacMillan and Co., 1898), p. 33, letter dated 7 August 1858.
43 G. Robb, ‘Circe in crinoline: domestic poisonings in Victorian England’, Journal of
Family History 22 (1997), 176–90.
44 The Wainwright case based on HO 144/19/48007; NA, MEPO 3/121; TS 18/1; The Times,
6 October 1875, p. 11; 7 October 1875, p. 11; 13 October 1875, p. 11; 14 October 1875,
p. 11; 15 October 1875, p. 9; 18 October 1875, p. 6; 20 October 1875, p. 6; 23 November
1875, p. 10; 24 November 1875, p. 10; 25 November 1875, p. 10; 26 November 1875, p.
8; 27 November 1875, p. 10; 29 November 1875, p. 10; 30 November 1875, pp. 10–11; 1
December 1875, p. 10; 2 December 1875, pp. 5–7; 4 December 1875, p. 10; 6 December
1875, p. 5; 8 December 1875, p. 6; 9 December 1875, p. 6; 10 December 1875, p. 6; 13
December 1875, p. 6; 17 December 1875, p. 5; 18 December 1875, p. 10; 20 December
1875, p. 6; 21 December 1875, p. 5; 22 December 1875, p. 11; 23 December 1875, p.
11. See also L. P. Curtis, Jack the Ripper and the London Press (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2001), pp. 101–4; Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet, pp. 210–19.
45 The Times, 1 December 1875, p. 10.
46 HO 144/19/48007/15; Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, pp. 46, 48.
47 The Times, 29 November 1875, p. 10.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
48 HO 144/19/48007/16; Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, p. 313.
49 W. Foulkes, A Generation of Judges (London: Sampson Law, Marston, Searle &
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Manchester University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nscc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1069613.
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violence and cohabitation in the courts
Rivington, 1886), p. 124; Bowen-Rowlands, Seventy-Two Years at the Bar, p. 175.
50 The Times, 2 December 1875, p. 7. Thomas was released from prison in 1881.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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3
Affinity and consanguinity
English law did not permit marriage between those too closely
related by blood or marriage. These prohibitions followed Leviticus
18, which banned marriages with kin of the first and second degrees.
For example, a woman could not marry her uncle or stepfather, nor the
husband of her deceased granddaughter or niece; a man could not marry
his stepaunt or his grandniece.1 The most controversial issue during the
Victorian period was the prohibition over marriage to a deceased wife’s
sister, but unions between other relatives were common, including
women and deceased husbands’ brothers, uncles and nieces, and several
which crossed generational lines. Other historians have studied the
reform movements to change the laws, so I will centre on the affinal and
consanguineous relationships themselves and how neighbours, families
and society reacted to them.2
Although the law made no distinction between marriages between
blood relatives and those between in-laws, most of the people involved
did. Few cohabitees were blood kin, and such cases involved public
disapprobation. In addition, relationships with a man in a position of a
father to a younger woman (such as stepfather) were problematic. Both
of these types of relationships could be frankly exploitative and shameful,
though the Victorian state rarely dealt effectively with them. In contrast,
many people in all classes saw no harm in marriages between in-laws.3
Unsurprisingly, then, most cases of ‘incest’ were affinal, even in the ‘low
dens’ of the working class.
Prohibited degrees and the working class
Most middle-class Victorians assumed the incest was primarily a problem
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
for the poor, though they were short on specifics. Henry Mayhew reported
some instances of blood incest in the London working class, including that
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affinity and consanguinity
of a well-known street patterer who ‘had lived in criminal intercourse with
his own sister, and his own daughter by one of his wives.’ Hugh Shinman,
a journalist, surveyed families in the poor part of Liverpool. He found a
widower who allegedly had a child with his own daughter; in the same
house was a brother ‘cohabiting’ with his sister.4 Yet actual evidence,
rather than suspicion on the part of hostile observers, is difficult to obtain,
since England had no criminal penalty for incest until 1908. Carolyn
Conley’s study of criminal justice in Kent uncovered only five fathers, four
stepfathers, and three uncles accused of incest; almost all were discharged
or acquitted.5
The number of blood relatives who had sexual unions in the working
classes was probably low. Anthony Wohl has argued that historians must
take the testimony of middle-class observers seriously, since those friendly
to the working class (like Friedrich Engels) also believed incest was common.
Even when blood incest occurred, though, most cases involved intermittent
incidents rather than cohabitation.6 In addition, the respectable working
classes disapproved of blood relatives marrying or cohabiting. Robert
Roberts, in The Classic Slum, explained that the neighbours in Salford
condemned the few households with incestuous unions, seeing them as ‘the
ultimate disgrace.’7 J. B. Aspinal , a barrister who gave evidence before the
Royal Commission on Marriage in 1848, surveyed several northern cities.
He reported on an
uncle and niece marrying in Doncaster, but he added
that it ‘was looked upon with a degree of horror and disgust’. W. C. Sleigh,
another barrister, heard rumours of a vil age ‘in which uncles and nieces
cohabited,’ as well as an uncle/niece union in Wakefield, but admitted he
found no ‘well authenticated cases’. Their testimony was supported by other
investigators in London and Staffordshire.8
Legal cases also indicate that most such marriages were between in-
laws. All the removal cases involving incestuous marriages were those of
affinity. Typical cases include one in 1847 where a woman had married her
deceased sister’s husband, or a case in 1861, in which a man had married
his deceased wife’s niece.9 In addition, in criminal desertion cases, the
incest defence almost always was one of affinal ties. At the Hertfordshire
assizes in 1904, James Brown escaped conviction for neglecting to maintain
his wife because she was his aunt by marriage, and church cases tell a
similar story.10 Moreover, letters to the editor of Justice of the Peace show
that JPs dealt with a variety of marriages of affinity but few of blood ties.
Between 1850 and 1914, JPs asked questions about the following: deceased
wife’s sister (thirteen); uncles and nieces (ten: four affinal, six by blood);
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
deceased husband’s brother (six); and one each for the following: half-sister
and brother, granddaughter of an uncle’s wife, father-in-law and daughter-
53
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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living in sin
in-law, and nephew and aunt-in-law.11 In short, most unions within the
prohibited degrees were between in-laws, though a minority of others
might occur, especial y uncles and nieces.
Men and women married relatives for a number of reasons, the most
important of which was the issue of housekeeping. A widower with children
turned to his children’s aunt for help, and the close quarters led to romantic
attachments. Wider kin supported these unions because they preferred
Living in Sin Page 11
