Living in Sin
Page 30
Norwich Mercury, 3 December 1892, p. 5; Lancaster Guardian, 27 October 1860, p. 2.
37 Mulley in Lancaster Guardian, 3 November 1855, p. 2; The Times, 26 October 1855, p. 9;
Gobey in CRIM 10/58, pp. 602–5, quote from p. 603. See also Lancaster Guardian, 17
March 1880, p. 7.
38 Bowling in HO 144/236/A51714; The Times, 14 July 1890, p. 6; Surrey Adverstiser and
County Times, 12 July 1890, p. 2. For men’s families intervening, see Plomer, Kilvert’s
Diary, p. 27; and ASSI 75/2; South Wales Daily News, 7 April 1876, p. 6.
39 D’Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, pp. 176–80; Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship, p. 49;
and J. Knelman, Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 35–42.
40 D’Cruze, Crimes of Outrage, p. 72; C. Chinn, They Worked All Their Lives: Women of the
Urban Poor in England, 1880–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988),
p. 159.
41 Birmingham Daily Mail, 6 March 1876, p. 3 (for quote); 9 March 1876, p. 3.
42 For women intervening, see HO 144/85/A7411; Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily
Express, 23 May 1881, p. 3; 24 May 1881, p. 3; The Times, 23 May 1881, p. 12; for men, see
Nottingham Evening Post, 18 May 1885, p. 4.
43 R. Roberts, A Ragged Schooling: Growing Up in the Classic Slum (London: Fontana
Paperbacks, 1984), p. 83.
44 Roberts, The Classic Slum, 47.
45 J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 192–213; F. Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution: A
Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); L.
Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge,
1990); P. Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (London:
Routledge, 2000), pp. 12–18.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
46 Curtis, Jack the Ripper and the London Press, pp. 20–4; 152.
47 British Library. Francis Place Papers ADD 27,830, Vol. XLII, ‘Minutes of Evidence Taken
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living in sin
Before the Select Committee on Drunkenness’, 5 August 1834, fol. 91, p. 16.
48 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, IV, 253; Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution,
p. 122; Mahood, The Madgalenes, p. 44.
49 The Shrewsbury Free Press, 26 September 1874, p. 2; 27 March 1875, p. 2.
50 R. Samuel, East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 108; Booth, Labour and Life of the People of London,
XVII, 123.
51 The Times, 7 July 1862, p. 5.
52 Squires in PCOM 1/126, pp. 721–4; The Times, 4 July 1884, p. 3; 26 July 1884, p. 6; 4 August
1884, p. 3; 16 August 1884, p. 3; 19 September 1884, p. 10; Jenkinson in Lancaster Guardian,
12 February 1910, p. 3.
53 Slade in The Times, 8 September 1884, p. 3; Lafferty in Lancaster Guardian, 25 November
1905, p. 8; Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, III, 351; Samuel, East End
Underworld, p. 130. See also The Times, 24 October 1898, 14.
54 Shrewsbury Free Press, 27 March 1875, p. 2.
55 Bailey, This Rash Act, pp. 174–5; The Times, 20 July 1861, p. 11.
56 Lancaster Guardian, 20 December 1890, p. 2; 8 November 1890, p. 2.
57 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, IV, 308–9; 324; 344; quote from p. 308.
58 For example, see The Times, 25 October 1860, p. 9.
59 D. Thomas, The Victorian Underworld (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp.
204–29, quote from p. 228.
60 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, IV, 354.
61 Tomalin, Mrs Jordan’s Profession, pp. 72–8; 113–20; C. Jerrold, The Story of Dorothy Jordan
(New York: Benjamin Blom, 1914), pp. 105–16; 156–65.
62 N. Auerbach, El en Terry: Player in Her Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), pp. 132–
86; D. Harbron, The Conscious Stone: The Life of Edward Wil iam Godwin (New York:
Benjamin Blom, 1971), pp. 66–76; 89–92; 116–19; J. Melville, El en and Edy: A Biography of
El en Terry and her Daughter, Edith Craig, 1847–1947 (London: Pandora, 1987), pp. 47–80.
For another example, see J. Coleman, Charles Reade as I Knew Him (London: Treherne &
Co., 1903); M. Elwin, Charles Reade: A Biography (London: J. Cape, 1931); and E. Smith,
Charles Reade (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976).
63 Yorkshire Gazette, 19 December 1885, p. 9; LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/60/1, Petition #83, 28 May
1853.
64 Auerbach, El en Terry, pp. 183–4; T. Davis, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social
Identity in Victorian Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 105–6, quote from p. 106;
Ayres, Paupers and Pig-Kil ers, p. 223.
65 LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/33/1, Petition #4, 4 October 1826.
66 LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/56/1, Petition #62, 28 April 1849; A/FH/A8/1/3/62/1, Petition #134, 11
August 1855.
67 Auerbach, El en Terry, pp. 367–436; Melville, El en and Edy, pp. 45–7; 169; 185–7; 217–20;
E. Craig, Gordon Craig: The Story of His Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp.
102–8, 116–32, 143–6, 156–9, 180–99, 214–24, 248–64, 300–4; M. Holyroyd, Augustus John:
A Biography 2 vols. Vol. I: The Years of Innocence (London: Heinemann, 1974), pp. 273,
285–90; 326–7; 335–6; 346–8; Vol. II: The Years of Experience (London: Heinemann, 1975),
pp. 1–10; 25–7; 49–53; 89–94; 131–3; 149–52; 190–3.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
68 HO 144/235/A51593; quote from piece 7; Lancaster Guardian, 31 May 1890, p. 5; 7 June
1890, p. 3; The Times, 2 August 1890, p. 10; 23 August 1890, p. 10; Chester Guardian and
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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
Record, 2 August 1890, p. 5; 6 August 1890, p. 6.
69 LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/52/1, Petition #120, 11 October 1845.
70 B. M. Ratcliffe, ‘Popular classes and cohabitation in mid-nineteenth-century Paris’,
Journal of Family History 21 (1996), 316–50; and L. Abrams, ‘Concubinage, cohabitation
and the law: Class and gender relations in nineteenth-century Germany’, Gender and
History 5 (1993), 81–100.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
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7
Cross-class cohabitation
In Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell offers a depictio
n of Victorian
cross-class liaisons through the character of Mary’s Aunt Esther, who
ran away with an army officer and lived with him for three years. They
had a little girl, but he left her when his regiment was called away. In
rapid succession, her business failed, her daughter died, and she became
an alcoholic prostitute.1 Gaskell assumed that cross-class matings were
between wealthy men and poorer women, that they were temporary, and
that the lower-class woman paid the price for her ‘fal ’. In some ways, this
portrait was accurate. The vast majority of such unions were between better-
off men and working-class women. In addition, many of these women
gave birth to children and were abandoned with little compensation. The
opposite situation, that of a well-off woman with a poorer man, was rare
because such women were all but unmarriageable after cohabitation. They
might marry into a lower class, but were unlikely to ‘live in sin’ at al , much
less with a man who had lower status. Indeed, I have only four examples of
better-off women with poorer men, and two of these involved women in
feminist/socialist circles (discussed in Chapter 9). Of the remaining two,
one had only a slight class difference; in the other, the man was already
married, so the couple had no choice about marrying.2 Because of the
rarity and peculiarity of these cases, this chapter will deal only with the
more common cross-class pattern.
Overal , these unions offer another example of women’s bleaker
prospects in cohabitation. Middle-class and upper-class men regarded
their working-class lovers as temporary, there only until a ‘real’ marriage
came into view. All the same, these relationships were complex. The men
did not want to marry, but many felt a sense of responsibility towards their
lovers; records show such men leaving bonds and inheritances to them.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Moreover, the women did not always end up degraded and dead. The
life of a mistress was precarious, but its financial rewards could be high,
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cross-class cohabitation
especial y for any children. Nor did all men despair of marrying lower-
class lovers. The myth of Pygmalion tempted some men to train their
cohabitees to climb the social ladder. Cross-class unions, then, combined
exploitative and advantageous elements for men and women, both defying
and deferring to class and gender expectations.
Kept mistresses
The participants in most cross-class cohabiting relationships expected
them to be temporary. These cohabitees broke into two groups. The first
involved professional mistresses; in these instances, women negotiated
terms for cohabitation and moved from protector to protector during
their careers. Some mistresses preferred to stay with the same man, and
others had their own careers (particularly in bohemian professions), but all
understood that they might someday lose out to a wife. The second group
includes poor women who preferred to marry, but chose to live with better-
off men rather than lose them; these relationships usual y ended when the
men married ‘suitable’ women. In neither of these groups were the women
entirely passive, but those in the second group were more likely to fall into
poverty when their lovers left.
Because middle-class and upper-class men had years of schooling
and work before they could marry, they either had to be celibate or find
other outlets for their sexual energies. Though Victorians worried most
about prostitution, another option was a mistress. Kept women were
several steps above common prostitutes; they lived with a succession of
men and could receive handsome incomes. Henry Mayhew argued that
these women were an entirely separate set of prostitutes, usual y faithful to
their keepers. He pointed out that many ‘confirmed bachelors’ were ‘already
to all intents and purposes united to one who possesses charms, talents,
and accomplishments’. He claimed men who kept such women included
merchants, army officers, and members of Parliament.3
Professional mistresses earned a good living. Early in the century,
Harriette Wilson made fabulous sums of money from a succession of
prominent men. The most famous Victorian courtesan, Catherine Walters
(‘Skittles’), had a long, prosperous career, beginning in 1859; she died in
1920 in comfortable retirement.4 Skittles was unusual y successful, but
women at the lower end of the spectrum could also prosper. Mayhew wrote
about the daughter of a tradesman who went away with a ‘young gentleman’
to begin her career. She had since lived with four different men and had
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
no worries for the future: ‘What do I think will become of me? What an
absurd question. I could marry to-morrow if I liked.’ Many working-class
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living in sin
women saw the life of a mistress as more al uring than their other options
– domestic service, the sweated trades, factory work, or marriage to a poor
man. Women had so little economic power that the sex trade was a rational
choice.5
Indeed, at times, the women were already prostitutes when they
met their future cohabitees. The men became regulars, and eventual y
monopolised the women’s time and shaded into cohabitation. Men with
property did not want to marry prostitutes, but they did sometimes feel
responsible for them. Thomas Hil , a London oil-shop owner, lived with
a prostitute named Chamber for two years, and he gave her two guineas a
week. He never wanted to marry her, but he left her £50 a year in his wil .
The plaintiff in Friend v. Harrison was also ‘a common street walker’ who
settled into a cohabiting relationship with a wealthy man. He, too, gave her
£50 a year at his death.6 Clearly, these women had every reason to prefer
the status of mistress to that of prostitute.
Nevertheless, a mistress was not a wife. Olive Schreiner, the South
African novelist, wrote to Karl Pearson in 1886 about a destitute young
woman she tried to help. The woman had been a prostitute, but ‘for seven
years she has been living with one man … He had promised to leave her
provided for: now he has died suddenly & left no wil . Of course the son
won’t give her anything.’ The young woman felt she had no choice but to
return to the streets. This circular career path was typical; women frequently
moved from respectable jobs to prosti
tution to kept status, then back to
respectable employment or prostitution. Françoise Barret-Ducrocq’s
study of the Foundling Hospital disclosed many such examples. Sarah T.,
a servant, lost her job due to ‘bad’ behaviour and was a prostitute for six
months until she met a lawyer who took a fancy to her. She was his mistress
for six months, during which she lived wel . However, the lawyer broke off
the connection when she had a child, and Sarah had to appeal to charities
for help. She hoped to go back into domestic service, thus completing the
circle.7Sarah was only a part-time prostitute, but she still saw being ‘kept’ as
a step up. Many poor women agreed that they could have more comfortable
lives with wealthy men. They made more money than most working
women, and they moved with apparent ease from one man to another.
Ellen Keenan, mentioned in Chapter 1, first lived with a baronet and had
a child with him, then with another man, and both gave her allowances.
She then lived with Captain Handley and had a daughter, earning her an
annuity of £150.8 Not all women were this fortunate, but certainly many
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
tried to make a living out of protection. Elizabeth Irvine lived with the
wealthy Austen Vickers in 1868. Vickers did not marry her, but told her to
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cross-class cohabitation
‘[a]sk me for as much money as you like, and you shall have it’. When he
ended their relationship, she lived with a horse dealer, a fact that emerged
during her breach of promise case. Her former servant, Rebekah Spriggs,
not only confessed about Elizabeth’s lover, but admitted that she herself
lived with a Mr Eliot, insisting, ‘She was not a lady in keeping or a gay lady,
as only one gentleman came to see her.’ Unsurprisingly, the jury found for
the defendant.9 Though she lost her case, Irvine had profited from Vickers
over their seven-year union, and she had also acquired a new protector