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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.
bigamy and cohabitation
the 1870s, 39 per cent in the 1880s, and 37 per cent in the 1890s. Thus, the
punishments bifurcated over the course of the century. Serious bigamies,
usual y those involving fraud, received long sentences, but the majority
received lesser punishments.
As these statistics indicate, circumstances were crucial to verdicts
and sentencing; the courts pondered a number of factors before giving
out punishments. The first consideration was the prosecutor in the case;
someone had to bring the matter to the attention of the authorities. Most
of the time, the prosecutor was the first or second spouse of the defendant.
Of the 167 cases in my selection with a named prosecutor, the first spouse
did so forty-five times (twenty-nine wives and sixteen husbands). When
the first spouse prosecuted, the court considered her or his motives. If
the first spouse were a woman who had been unjustly deserted, the court
was sympathetic, but judges and juries would not support vindictive
prosecutions.12 First husbands who prosecuted were even more suspect,
since they could support themselves. For instance, Joseph Morant left his
wife in 1859 after six years of marriage. Caroline remarried in 1864, and
when Morant reappeared in 1872, he had her arrested. The jury acquitted
her, and Morant then asked if he could have her back. Commissioner
Kerr snapped, ‘Certainly not. How can a fellow like you have the face to
complain seeing that you suddenly leave your wife and remain away from
her for 13 years…? It is preposterous to make such a request.’13
Second spouses far outnumbered first ones as prosecutors. Of the
167 cases with identified prosecutors, 61 were second wives, 8 were second
husbands, 13 were members of the second wives’ families, and 4 were
members of second husbands’ families. Thus, almost 45 per cent of the
prosecutors were second wives or their relatives. The key to the court’s
reaction here was the information available to the second spouse. If she
had been tricked into an invalid marriage, the court would be severe; if
she knew the connection, the sentencing was light. Justice Lush believed
that Ebeneezer Derby had told his second wife that he was already married
so gave him only one day. In contrast, Justice Denman fumed at Robert
Steventon in 1880. Judith Killen, his second wife, did not know that he was
married, and he had also sold up her property after they ‘wed’. Denman
complained, ‘this was not an ordinary case of bigamy but one of cruel
deception.’ He gave Steventon five years.14
If neither spouse prosecuted, family members usual y did. Brothers,
in-laws, cousins, aunts, and uncles, as well as parents, got involved. Martha
Blaney’s parents instituted the arrest of her husband, William Johnson, in
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
1830. Johnson had sent Blaney to the hospital with his violent behaviour,
and Blaney’s parents used his previous marriage in 1828 to free her. Men’s
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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
families also intervened, especial y in the few cases involving well-off people.
Annabel a Robertson had become a governess after her first marriage had
failed, due, she claimed, to the cruelty of her husband. She worked for the
Radermacher family and fell in love with the oldest son, and the couple
married in 1854. The elder Mr Radermacher discovered her previous
marriage and prosecuted her ‘to shield his son from the consequences of
the illegal contract’.15
Public prosecutions were rare, totalling 19 cases, and fall into two
main categories. First were ‘serial’ bigamists, those who used marriage to
defraud people. Twenty-seven defendants had married three or more times,
and ten of these resulted in public prosecutions. Most serial defendants (89
per cent, or 24 of 27) were men. A typical case was that of Robert Taylor,
who had married six women by 1840 by pretending to be the heir to a large
fortune. He was convicted three times and final y received fourteen years,
so at least he did not marry anyone else for awhile. These men had found
an easy way to make money by fraud, and some were probably professional
con men. A bigamist in prison with R. M. Fox during the First World War
bragged that ‘his offense was better than stealing’, though an indignant
pickpocket disputed this.16
In contrast, only two women in my study made a career of marrying,
and one was in the late eighteenth century. Sarah Lane pleaded guilty to
bigamy in 1764; she had married four men and was branded on the hand.
Anne Wood, who was tried in 1870, was also a serial bigamist. She had
already married three men when she went through another ceremony with
George Wood. Wood testified that ‘she acted most improperly, obtaining
money under false pretenses from his friends’. She also opened his letters
and helped herself to any money they contained. The Common Serjeant
gave her twelve months in prison.17 The only other woman with three
husbands was Margaret Milton. Despite her multiple spouses, she was not
a ‘professional’ bigamist; her case is discussed in the section on ‘acceptable’
bigamy, below.
The second major type of public prosecution involved men who
deserted their wives and left them chargeable to the parish. For example,
in 1880 Edward Prince was arrested for deserting his wife and three
children. By the time the police caught him in January 1880, he had already
remarried. The police added a charge of bigamy to the original charge, and
he served three months. Other men tried to get out of supporting their
second wives by proving they were not legal y married; the authorities
retaliated by bringing bigamy charges. In 1895, James Coaley deserted his
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
first wife, then had two children with a second. He deserted the second wife
as wel , and the JPs ordered him to support her. He refused and produced
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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.
bigamy and cohabitation
his first marriage certificate to demonstrate why. He was promptly arrested
for bigamy, convicted, and sentenced to twelve months at hard labour.18
&n
bsp; Class, gender, and ‘acceptable’ bigamy
The majority of bigamous families were from the working class. Of the
187 cases where the newspapers mention a specific occupation, 144 were
working-class, 31 were lower-middle, middle-class or upper-class, and 12
involved mixed class pairings.19 Over three-quarters of the cases, then,
were entirely in the working class, and 84 per cent had at least one working-
class partner. Most of the middle-class cases involved lower-middle class
families who meshed well with the working-class people around them. An
example was Maria Humphries, who owned a lodging house; her second
husband was Edwin Fisher, a navvy, who boarded with her. Though she
was of a higher class, the difference was smal .20
The few with large class differences interacted with gender in complex
ways. Some men married bigamously in an effort to gain control of women’s
money fraudulently, but most were simply trying to better themselves.
James Foster married Ada Tucker, the daughter of the an admiral, in 1889.
Foster had been in the navy and did odd jobs around Tucker’s home, and
they courted for seven months. When she learned he had already married
in 1864, she prosecuted him for bigamy, annoyed that she had ‘raised him’
only to be ‘ruined’. Judges and juries were dubious about men who used
women to make their fortunes, and Foster received twelve months in
prison.21
The other major category of cross-class cases involved women
who married men of higher class. Women using marriage in this way
was far more acceptable to judges and juries, though women who were
‘adventuresses’ did not get much sympathy. Eliza Manley married Thomas
Archer, a wealthy man, in the 1850s. The two lived extravagantly for some
months until Archer tried to divorce her, at which point he discovered
she was already married. At her trial in 1860, the Recorder gave her two
months at hard labour. More typical y, the women were servants, and the
marriages were of doubtful legality. Richard Dames was an officer in the
militia and the son of a sugar refiner. At the age of nineteen, in 1879, he
secretly married a servant in his mother’s house, Elizabeth Pace, by making
false statements to the registrar. When he married a more suitable woman
in 1882, Pace unsuccessful y prosecuted him for bigamy.22 Despite their
press coverage, these cases were a minority; most bigamies occurred within
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
the working class.
Whatever their class, these couples shared reasons for marrying and
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
living in sin
for ‘self-divorce’, and their communities accepted bigamous families under
certain conditions. Historians have noted the influence of neighbours on
working-class families; they often served as alternative authority structures
on social and domestic issues.23 Most historians have centred on neighbours’
roles as enforcers of certain levels of family harmony, cleanliness, and
sexual conformity. In contrast, bigamy cases, like affinal marriages, show
that communities could be flexible; a strict adherence to the law was not
always necessary.
The major circumstance that made bigamy acceptable was if
the bigamist had a good reason for leaving her or his first spouse. Not
surprisingly, then, bigamists explained their desertions by highlighting the
‘misbehaviour’ of their husbands/wives, a highly gendered term. When
applied to wives, it usual y meant sexual misconduct. Benjamin Griffiths left
his wife when she had an affair with his nephew. Similarly, William Trouse’s
wife ‘had become an abandoned woman’. Both men argued at their trials
that their desertions of such women were justified. Their arguments were
persuasive, because neither had neighbours testify against them, and the
judges in the trials (Platt and Huddlestone) gave them nominal sentences
(Griffiths paid a fine of one shilling, and Trouse served one day).24 Since
few poor men or women could afford a divorce, courts kept this in mind.
James Mitchel ’s wife left him for another man, so he remarried; at the trial
in 1854, Justice Erle asserted ‘if the prisoner had been in a higher rank of
life, he would have been divorced, and then he could have legal y married
to the second person.’ He gave Mitchell only three days.25
Men were also reluctant to remain in marriages in which the wives
were too assertive. Joseph Ainley, a peddler, ran away from his wife, Sarah,
after only one week because, he said, she had ‘taken upon herself to become a
tyrant in the house’, including throwing him out after an argument. Charles
Matthews, an accountant in Bristol, characterised his first wife, Elizabeth,
as a ‘woman of very violent temper’. When arrested, he remarked that ‘he
would rather go to prison than go back to his wife.’26 Whether or not their
tempers had been provoked, these women had stepped over the bounds
of acceptable behaviour, so their husbands felt free to find happiness
elsewhere. In fact, one detective testified that Matthews’s neighbours
supported his version of events. Matthews was lower-middle class, so his
community’s flexibility was particularly noteworthy.
Money was also often a bone of contention. Husbands might accuse
wives of ‘misbehaviour’ if they did not share property or earnings. Jane
Bristow, the second wife of Peter Collen, a labourer, claimed that as soon
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
as Peter married her, he became abusive: ‘he demanded her money, and
when she refused him, said, “What do you suppose I married you for
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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.
bigamy and cohabitation
except your money?”’ Jane might have been overstating the case to excuse
herself, but some husbands confessed that money led to trouble. George
Galway, a traveller, admitted that he and his wife, married since 1825, had
serious problems after she inherited property in 1843. That acquisition led
to arguments, and he soon left.27 With resources chronical y short, conflicts
over money were bitter. Because providing was one of the linchpins of
Victorian masculinity, especial y after 1850, men reacted badly to any
challenges to it.28
Final y, men felt justified in refusing to live with women who were
not successful housekeepers. First, women should balance the family’s
budget; men could not live with women who squandered their pay. George
Braidwood accused his first wife of such reckless s
pending that she ‘caused
the home to be broken up’.29 Second, women were to be nurturing and
caring. John Calvert said he had been unhappy with his first wife, because
she ‘had left him twice when he was seriously il ’, a dereliction of wifely
duty. Patrick Leach, an Irishman in York, summed up these expectations
when he explained why he had separated from his wife: she ‘treated him
very il , neglected his children, and sold him up, on account of which he
imagined that he was justified in taking another wife.’30
Women had their own meanings for ‘misbehaviour’. Primarily, the
term meant violence, and these claims elicited mercy in bigamy trials. Eliza
Gallivan had particularly bad taste in husbands. Her first husband went to
prison for gouging out one of her eyes and stabbing her. She then remarried
but had to run away again when her second husband threatened to gouge
out her remaining eye. Although most women did not have such horror
stories, many claimed that ‘ill-treatment’ or ‘disgraceful’ behaviour had
forced them from their homes.31 Stephen Aldhouse’s first wife left him due
to his ill treatment. He then married Hephzibah Roberts in 1837; though
she had two children with him, she, too, left him for abusing her. Roberts,
unlike Frances, was able to free herself from his threats by prosecuting
him for bigamy, and he was transported for seven years.32 Violence may
have been an accepted part of working-class marriage, but not all women
tolerated it.
Second, ‘misbehaviour’ for men included failure to provide. James
MacDonald, a clerk, married three women between 1847 and 1863. His first
wife, who had four children with him, tracked him down and prosecuted
him. According to the court reports, ‘He had treated all three wives with
the grossest neglect’. Not surprisingly, the judge gave him seven years.33
On the other hand, many times, women justified their illegal remarriages
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
by the need to find a provider. Like MacDonald, Margaret Milton had
married three times by 1872. Unlike him, though, Milton pleaded the need
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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.
Living in Sin Page 16
