Living in Sin
Page 27
Mrs B— told Mayhew that she and her husband had lived in three different
places, all associated with rubbish carters. In two of them, most of the
couples married, but Paddington was different: ‘I don’t know why, for they
seemed to live one with another, just as men do with their wives.’ In part,
these were self-selected neighbourhoods, since cohabiting couples chose
streets where they felt comfortable.24
In addition, some occupations tended to cohabitation more than
others. Gillis identified shoemakers, costers, sweeps, and dustmen as
having high levels of cohabitation. In mid-century, Mayhew listed costers,
street patterers, sailors, tramps, and scavengers. Cohabitation was a
rational choice for couples in these professions, since they either involved
long periods of separation and/or extreme poverty. Those who were gone
for long periods, especial y, needed flexibility, which was why sailors and
soldiers were prone to it.25 Often the women involved with sailors or soldiers
were full-time or part-time prostitutes, another reason for not regularising
the relationships. George Thomas, a black sailor in Liverpool in the 1880s,
lived with Margaret Askin, a prostitute, when he was in port. He resented
her demands for money and her unfaithfulness, and he eventual y killed
her. Nonetheless, he insisted she was ‘driving me backwards and forwards
so as to marry her, but I did not want to marry.’ George did not see her
as an appropriate wife, even for a poor sailor of colour, despite his strong
feelings for her.26
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Tramps, too, had little reason to marry, since they were constantly
on the move and very poor. Though some tramping pairs stayed together
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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the demimonde and the very poor
for years, others wanted temporary unions. J. W. Rounsfel , a tramping
printer in the 1880s, described meeting a beggar named Kitty while on the
road. Her previous partner was in prison, so Kitty tried to get Rounsfell
to take his place, an offer he declined.27 Mayhew also heard stories from
tramping women about these unions. One woman went haymaking and a
tramping haymaker ‘ruined’ her, so ‘I belonged to him. He didn’t say I was
his wife. They don’t call us their wives.’ The haymaker left her after a few
years, taking advantage of his legal freedom. These women could not hold
out for marriage, since they needed protection on the road. Mary Higgs, an
Edwardian social investigator, reported: ‘A destitute woman once told me
that if you tramped, “you had to take up with a fellow.” I can well believe
it.’28 Though tramps’ reasons for cohabiting were gendered, they were not
irrational.
As Gillis’s and Mayhew’s lists showed, poor settled couples also
eschewed the ceremony. Indeed, many of them did not marry because
it was not different enough from cohabitation to be worth their while.
Several things distinguished them from the often temporary unions of
soldiers or tramps. First, many of them went through their own versions of
weddings, indicating a desire for ritual. Throughout the century, clergymen
complained about couples who came to other people’s weddings, mouthed
the words, exchanged rings, and then left. Other couples, particularly
in the early nineteenth century, used folk rituals, such as ‘jumping the
broom’. Couples also exchanged rings, or, in the case of shoemakers, made
‘tack’ marriages by saying ‘If thee tak, I tak thee.’29 Middle-class observers
insisted that the poor had no regard for marriage, but the desire for a ritual
showed support for a public bond, even if the couple did not want to pay
for a ceremony.
Second, these unions began at young ages, the couples stayed together
for years, and they expected fidelity. Mayhew had several examples of these
kinds of unions. The costers treated their ‘wives’ badly, but the women
remained faithful. Similarly, he estimated only one in twenty dustmen
married, but they ‘remain constant’, because ‘the woman earns nearly half
as much as the man.’ Because of the similarity to marriage, these couples
saw a ceremony as pointless. The neighbours of Mrs B—, the wife of the
rubbish carter, argued that ‘there was no good wasting money to get their
“marriage lines” all for no use’.30 Sims quoted London couples who said
‘it’s a lot of trouble and they haven’t the time.’ And women as well as men
demurred. Booth discussed a couple who lived together for forty years.
When asked why they did not marry, the woman explained, ‘He would
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
have married me again and again … but I could never see the good of
it.’31 The wedding did not give enough benefits to justify the expense, and
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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
living together lessened – though did not eliminate – interference from the
church and state.
The resemblance of stable cohabitation to marriage comes out most
clearly in the violence cases. As stated before, jealousy was overwhelmingly
the motive for attacks. Forty-two times, the victim had ended the
relationship; in thirty-five more cases, the victim had aroused the attacker’s
jealousy while they were still together; and in six more cases, the victim
had threatened to leave. This adds up to 83 of 149 cases with stated motives
– almost 56 per cent.32 Moreover, as with married households, money was a
significant factor in conflicts; arguments over funds were the main problem
in thirty-two cases (21 per cent). Just as if she were wed, a woman cohabitee
managed the household budget on whatever pay the man gave her. If she
did not, she had failed her main duty, and any woman who took more of
the pay packet than the man offered was ‘stealing’ from him. A typical case
was that of John Banks, who murdered Ann Gilligan in 1866, because, he
claimed, ‘[s]he has taken three shillings out of my pocket.’33
For their part, women insisted that men support them and any
children, even after the end of the union. Though the state limited men’s
responsibilities for illegitimate children, women recognized no difference,
using affiliation when possible and demanding support in other ways when
it was not. Louisa Jenkins insisted that William Bennet support their two
children, even after he had left her. Bennet, unwilling to give her more
money, broke her neck. Similarly, Thomas Carter, a police constable,
beat Hermoine Tay
lor with a hammer when she asked him for money
for their baby daughter.34 One of the supposed advantages to men in
cohabiting relationships was the lack of financial responsibility; men were,
then, exasperated when cast-off women refused to accept this. But the
resemblance to marriage led women to insist on men providing, whether
their children were legitimate or not.
In their reasons for conflict, then, many poor cohabitees resembled
spouses, fighting over resources and infidelity. In fact, some of these
relationships were so unhappy that one cannot help wondering why they
did not separate, since they were free to go. Contemporaries also found this
puzzling. Martha Truss, a pub landlady, told John Wiggins about Agnes
Oaks: ‘if you cannot be happy and comfortable together you had better part;
you are not compelled to live with her if you are not married’. Unfortunately,
Wiggins ignored the advice, and he was not unique. Job Taylor and Emily
Twiggs tramped together, and, over time, Taylor became enraged with her
drinking and infidelity. Rather than leaving her, he murdered her in a rage.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
They were relatively young (Taylor was thirty-three), had been together
only eighteen months, and were in a profession that often had temporary
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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.
the demimonde and the very poor
unions. Yet Taylor considered her his wife and could not break away from
her.35 Some reasons for refusing to leave were obvious. Women needed
economic support, especial y if they had children, and they may also have
feared retaliation if they left. But why did the men stay? In part, the men
did not like to be separated from their children, as we saw in Chapter 2.
Also, cohabitees who had settled into a relationship found starting again
difficult. Isaac Townend lived with Ruth Hollings for years; both were in
their forties, and both were bickering alcoholics by 1872. Rather than leave
her, he strangled her and hanged himself. The key point, though, was the
level of commitment, that is, if the couple felt ‘married’. Some couples, like
Townend and Hollings, cemented their ties with years of cohabitation, but
others did so more quickly. William Abigale (twenty) killed his pregnant
cohabitee because he could not provide for them. In his confession, he
claimed, ‘We were not married but we had drawn up & signed an agreement
– that we were to live together as husband and wife and be faithful till death
should part us.’ Moreover, most of those who murdered their partners
struck out in moments of fury but did not intend to kil . Like adulterous
cohabitees, these couples called each other ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, and the
woman took the man’s name, and their emotional pain at the end of their
relationships was clear.36 They were married in all but name. Because they
were too poor to interest the state, their decisions, in a sense, created a
‘marriage’ by taking its roles and making a public statement, and the
bonds endured. They were, then, supportive of marriage as a concept, but
challenged its legal and religious definition, though not its gender roles.
Family and neighbours
As with adulterous unions, wider kin were unenthusiastic about
cohabitation. As usual, the women’s family preferred marriage, especial y
as there were no legal impediments. Ellen Marney lived with George
Mulley, a porter, in the 1850s. When she left him for refusing to marry her,
she had the firm support of her mother. Similarly, James Gobey, who had
three children with Mary Ann Chalmers, complained that her ‘mother and
sister enticed her away’.37 All the same, as these examples show, families did
not ostracise women cohabitees. Siblings, especial y, kept close contact and
tried to help. Eliza Nightingale, for instance, lived in her sister’s lodging
house with her lover, George Bowling, and both her sister and a sister-in-
law defended her reputation after George murdered her. The man’s natal
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
family could intervene to break up these unions, too, but this was less
common.38
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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
The reaction of neighbours to this kind of cohabitation differed little
from those of adulterous cohabitees; if anything, those in poor, rough
neighbourhoods were even more indifferent to it. Since the divide between
respectable and rough was seldom clean, though, the relationship with
neighbours was complex. Many cohabiting couples in the poorest classes
lived side by side with married couples and interacted with them often.
The tolerance for them is nevertheless hard to determine, since most of the
evidence about them is in violence cases. Newspapers sensationalised the
coverage of crime and tended to divide the working class into a respectable/
rough dichotomy that was far too simplistic.39 The historian must look
careful y at these sources to determine the acceptance of cohabitation
among England’s poorest subjects.
Many times the newspapers highlighted the ‘indifference’ of the
neighbours to the frequent quarrels of unrespectable couples, and
neighbours’ intervention certainly had limits. Neighbours would not
enter another person’s home unless they heard sounds indicating that the
altercation was life-threatening. Where to draw that line depended on
many factors, including the woman’s respectability, partly indicated by her
marital status.40 All the same, one can easily overstate the reluctance of
neighbours to intervene. For one thing, many of the poor lived in boarding
houses where privacy issues were less clear-cut. For another, the evidence
from my cases indicates that neighbours were often the mainstays of those
involved in domestic violence; in particular, women neighbours aided each
other. Neighbours were the primary witnesses to the violence in 74 of the
cases, and in 32 more they intervened to assist the victim but did not give
evidence. Since I have detailed trial data for 196 of my cases, a large number
of incidents (54 per cent) involved neighbourly help. In part this is because
many of my cases involve the deadly violence that brought in outside
assistance. But these numbers also indicate that these cohabitees were
regular parts of their neighbourhoods. Most of these female witnesses were
respectably married, but this fact did not lead them to ignore cohabiting
couples in distress.
A case in the 1876 Birmingham Daily Mail il ustrates this point. Two
of the neighbours heard violent noises from the home of Mary Boswell
and George Elwell and did nothing. The newspaper concluded that since
the fights were common, the neighbours were ‘indifferent’. Yet the inquest
showed that the neighbours, though reluctant to invade another family’s
home, were heavily involved. On the night in question, Boswell and her
children took refuge with neighbours on two separate occasions. The
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
second time, a married neighbour volunteered to keep the children for the
rest of the night. In addition, both men and women neighbours were key
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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.
the demimonde and the very poor
witnesses precisely because they did not ignore the violence.41 Neighbours
might disapprove of sexual irregularity, but they still pulled together in
times of trouble. Numerous examples attest to both men and women trying
to lessen the violence or rescue victims.42
One should not build too much on this evidence, since cases of violence
were, by definition, unusual. Other sources, such as the evidence from the
Royal Commission of 1912 and Mayhew and Booth, record neighbours
who disliked unmarried couples in their midst. Mrs B—, who complained
about the cohabiting rubbish carters, offers one example. In addition,
working-class autobiographies have evidence that marriage certificates
conveyed added status; Robert Roberts recalled a Salford woman who won
disputes by ‘bearing her “marriage lines” aloft like a banner’.43 Also, since
these couples chose not to marry, they could not appeal for sympathy by
blaming the law as did adulterous or bigamous couples. Over al , though,
since rough and respectable often lived side by side, the married working
class had to cooperate with cohabitees on a regular basis. In fact, despite
the moral strictures of his Salford neighbourhood, Roberts admitted
that cohabitees did not suffer discrimination: ‘those who dwelt together
unmarried – “livin’ tal y” or “over t’ brush”, as the saying went – came in for