Living in Sin
Page 12
to have young children in the care of someone closely interested in their
welfare. Childless widowers or bachelors also needed housekeepers, so
chose them from kin. Since the women involved were doing all the duties
of the wife – cooking, cleaning, childcare – they easily slipped into sexual
duties as wel , as Leonore Davidoff’s work on landladies has shown.12 After
al , how could a man be just an employer when his housekeeper was also his
relative? And if the woman became pregnant, a relative felt added pressure
to ‘make things right’ and marry her.
According to several sources, the results of such marriages were
general y positive. W. C. Sleigh interviewed affinal working-class couples
in 1846–47. One man, a widower with four children, explained, ‘My wife’s
sister was extremely kind to them. I thought I should like her, and she
thought she should like me; we married, and we have been as happy as
man and wife could be ever since.’ Indeed, most witnesses before the Royal
Commission emphasised the happiness of these homes. J. F. Denham
speculated that the parties were more likely to know ‘each other’s real
character and disposition’ before they wed and so had a better chance
for a successful union. Considering these cheering prospects, working-
classes couples ignored the law, or at least assumed it did not apply in
their particular cases. A publican in Maidstone explained, ‘My wife was
dead, and I could not be so well suited in my house as to marry her sister;
therefore, I do not recognize any law that says I shall not’.13
These couples insisted that their marriages were moral y correct even
in the face of religious and state opposition. Annie Bailey, twenty-three,
was a servant in Revd S. W. Mangin’s household in the late 1880s. Her
uncle-in-law (he had married her mother’s sister), William Clapp, lived
nearby. The two decided to marry and first tried to do so in the church,
but Mangin told them he could not marry them because of their affinity.
In response, in September of 1889, the couple married at the Registrar’s
Office. When arrested, both Annie and William argued that though they
could not be married in the church, they assumed they could still have a
civil ceremony. Annie went further, asserting that ‘She searched the Bible
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
through, but could not find such a marriage anywhere forbidden.’ Justice
Stephen summed up against Bailey, but the jury acquitted her anyway.
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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.
affinity and consanguinity
Stephen, annoyed, lectured Bailey, ‘whatever she or others might think
… she was not married in the least.’ One suspects that she paid no more
attention to the judge than she had to the vicar.14
As this case indicates, most of these couples ‘went through a form of
marriage’ at some point. These ceremonies gave legitimacy to the couple and
their family and friends. The desire for a ceremony was particularly acute
if the woman became pregnant, but the latter was not always necessary.
One commentator guessed that a small trader had married his wife’s niece
‘to avoid scandal’ even though they had no children. Most of the time, the
two had lived together first and then tried to regularise the relationship.
A couple in 1852, for example, a niece and uncle, lived ‘in concubinage’
for a few weeks, but then ‘went to a large town some distance from their
residence’ and married by licence.15 Fortunately for these couples, marrying
illegal y was quite easy. Most of the clergymen who gave evidence to various
Royal Commissions of Marriage complained that they could not stop such
marriages. Revd J. F. Denham testified that banns were useless: ‘I find that
people go out of the parish continual y to be married’. Revd John Hatchard
agreed; every time he refused to marry a couple, they went to London and
returned married.16
The clergy were conflicted about these unions, for if the couple did
not marry illegal y, they often lived ‘in sin’ together. One clergyman in
the Potteries had two couples in his parish who cohabited because they
were in-laws, and he testified that he would much prefer them to marry,
especial y as they preferred this themselves, but did not wish to break the
law. John Garbett seconded this, pointing out that ‘when notorious cases
of concubinage have occurred, and the parties have been spoken to, they
have pointed to these persons and said, “He is no more married than I
am, in law.” I think it has a bad moral effect’.17 In addition, couples forced
to cohabit unmarried blamed the church or the state, not themselves. A
Devonport farmer tried to marry his deceased wife’s sister, but his vicar
refused him. He then lived with the woman and ‘threw the responsibility of
the refusal upon the clergyman’, and his neighbours supported him. In fact,
not even all clergymen disapproved of affinal marriages. Several testified
for removing the prohibition on at least some of the degrees. Dissenters
particularly wanted reform; some of these ministers had married their
deceased wives’ sisters themselves.18 In addition, the Catholic church
offered dispensations for special cases. If a couple received one, they did
not hesitate to marry, ignoring the Anglican rules.19
As these examples indicate, the Anglican clergy disapproved more
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
than the wider community. Especial y in affinal unions, neighbours and
friends were general y supportive. In 1864, Tom Mann’s father married
55
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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
Mary Ann Grant and had four children with her before she died in 1858.
Five years later, Mann married Harriet Grant, Mary Ann’s sister. None
of the neighbours objected, and Tom got five more half-siblings over the
next few years.20 Arthur Stanbra, a farmer in Oxford, took in his older
brother Richard’s daughter, Mary, as his housekeeper in the 1880s, and the
two eventual y shaded into an intimate relationship. When Mary became
pregnant, Arthur married her out of the parish by licence. The record of
the case does not indicate who prosecuted Arthur – perhaps the vicar.
Whoever did so, though, was in the minority. His neighbours defended
him at the trial, and the jury ‘very strongly’ recommended mercy. Justice
Cave agreed, sentencing Arthur to one day.21 Arthur had seduced his niece,
but he tried to ‘do the right thing’ when she became pregnant. Thus, his
neighbours ignored his perjury and incest.
Stil , occasional y these unions led to strong intra-family
disagreements. The cases that provoked more opposition were those with
much older men and young women and blood ties. In 1894, a Primitive
Methodist minister at Guernsey married a man named John Matthews
(fifty-six) to Louisa Carré (twenty-four), the daughter of his sister. The
ceremony was in the minister’s house without a registrar, so the minister was
sentenced to six months at hard labour, while Matthews got twelve months.
The local community thought the punishment too severe and petitioned
the Home Secretary for clemency. Though the Methodist community
sympathised, Thomas Carré, the girl’s father, bitterly resented Matthews’s
conduct. Carré had allowed his brother-in-law to live with the family when
Matthews had returned to England after a twenty-year absence. In return,
Matthews pursued his niece and ignored Thomas’s warnings that marriage
with her was illegal. When the couple eloped, Thomas, furious, prosecuted
everyone involved. Nonetheless, her father’s ire did not influence Louisa,
who stood by her decision. Eventual y, the minister was pardoned and
released. Matthews’s fate was uncertain, but his family’s disapproval almost
certainly meant the end of his ‘marriage’.22
Matthews’s difficulties were in part the result of Louisa’s natal family’s
hostility to the marriage. In addition, the age difference was large in this
case, so the marriage seemed less natural. Stil , the fact that the local
reaction was divided between the disapproving jury and the forgiving
petitioners indicates support for some consanguineous marriages (again,
an uncle and a niece). Many could not understand why these marriage were
illegal, perhaps because they were not far removed from cousin marriages,
which were legal (even, on occasion, actively encouraged). One could say
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
the same about aunts and nephews, but there the age difference was more
of a bar. At any rate, laws against these marriages did not discourage all
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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.
affinity and consanguinity
couples, though some cases caused controversy.
The reaction of authorities to these marriages was mixed. By marrying
illegal y, the couples faced the threat of arrest and trial, usual y for perjury
or making false statements to a registrar. Interestingly, the church was often
readier to prosecute than the state. In 1861, the vicar of Longbridge Deverill
wrote to the Home Secretary about a man and his sister-in-law who had
gone to a different parish, lied about their residency and their relationship,
and married. The vicar demanded the Home Secretary prosecute them,
supported by the General Registrar of the area. Nevertheless, the secretary
refused, since ‘I am afraid we shall be laughed at if we prosecute this
old couple … What harm have they done?’ The in-laws, then, were left
in peace, yet another example of the law’s flexibility when faced with
marital dissent.23 Indeed, when cases got to court, juries usual y acquitted
defendants or recommended mercy (as with Stanbra). William Perry,
mentioned in Chapter 1, was tried for falsifying his marriage licence to his
half-niece in 1901. Despite testimony from the vicar, the jury acquitted him
because ‘the witnesses were very illiterate.’24
Juries’ attitudes undoubtedly made officials reluctant to prosecute,
despite pressure from the church. In 1875, a Welsh vicar wrote to the Home
Secretary about a case in Llanel y. John Hopkins, sixty, a carpenter, had
married his stepdaughter, Jane Francis, thirty. The vicar had refused to
marry them, saying that ‘ marrying her was quite out of the question as it
would be contrary to the law of the land, of the church and of the Bible’.
Shortly afterwards, the reverend left the parish, and Hopkins persuaded
the curate to marry them. The vicar, incensed, tried to get the police to
prosecute, but they refused. He then appealed to the Home Office, arguing
they should make an example because ‘ incestuous marriages are becoming
common in this neighbourhood, and that in some cases marriage licenses
are obtained for this purpose which cannot be had without perjury.’ The
Home Office could not agree about a prosecution, since most of the officials
doubted they could get a conviction.25 Given these conditions, the working
class’s determination to ignore both the laws and the advice of the Anglican
clergy was understandable.
Though the official silence worked in favour of many couples, it had
negative consequences as wel , since it extended to abusive relationships.
This was particularly the case with stepdaughters and stepfathers, whose
relationships could be frankly exploitative. Sarah Anne Scott lived with a
man named John King whom she had always regarded as her father. In
1844, King’s cohabitee died, so Sarah took over the household. In December,
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
John began trying to induce Sarah into a sexual relationship. John saw
Sarah as his cohabitee’s successor, since she was doing other wifely duties.
57
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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
Sarah fought him off and then prosecuted him, but she was fortunate to
have a neighbour’s support. Susan Mumm also found cases of abuse in her
study of Anglican penitentiaries; one woman, aged twenty-four, had been
sexual y abused by her stepfather since the age of nine. When she arrived,
she had four children and another on the way.26
Lack of sympathy for incest victims was common in Victorian courts;
Carolyn Conley, in her study of Kent, found that men charged with incest
with their stepdaughters, unless the girl was under the age of twelve, were
all acquitted. Judges assumed that young girls consented to sexual relations,
ignoring the power differences between fathers and their dependants.
Louise Jackson’s findings about child sexual abuse also showed that the
Victorian courts rarely prosecuted incest cases with older girls as victims,
and such cases had a low conviction rate.27 At any rate, these incidents
point up, again, the difficulty of knowing how much cohabitation went
on within families; with the courts so hostile, few girls complained. Thus,
disapproving clergymen or, on occasion, neighbours, were the only help
for many victims of incest.
With the criminal courts largely indifferent, the more serious
consequence
for working-class affinal and consanguineous families was
when they needed assistance, especial y with the death or desertion of the
breadwinner. At that point, women and children came into contact with
the poor law. Since none of these marriages were valid, the women were
single and their children illegitimate. The women, then, were ‘undeserving’
and went to the workhouse. This happened to a woman in 1884, whose
husband had died. He had been her former father-in-law, so the JPs
denied her outdoor relief.28 Second, deserting ‘husbands’ could ignore
their responsibilities for providing, a circumstance that frustrated many
magistrates. Robert Clarke, a JP in the Wincanton union, complained about
a man in his parish who married his deceased wife’s niece in 1846 and had
nine children with her. He then deserted her in 1862, and his children and
their mother went to the workhouse. Clarke warned that women should
beware such marriages; an illegal y-wed man could leave his family ‘to the
tender mercies of the parish, and continue to enjoy himself as if nothing
had happened.’ Clarke’s anger echoed in other sources. J. S. Thorburne
testified in 1848 that he knew of ‘three or four cases where the law was
taken advantage of, and made the means of great cruelty by the wilful
desertion of the second wife’.29 Whether or not they had intended to desert
their families from the beginning, men pled ‘nullity of marriage’ quickly
when arrested for non-support.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Magistrates fought court cases to remove unmarried mothers and
their children to the mother’s birth parish in an effort to avoid the expense
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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.
affinity and consanguinity
of a pauper family; though this power was restricted in 1846, 1861, and
1865, parishes used it when they could. Mary Burrin married the husband
of her deceased sister, Hannah. When William died in 1844, he left Mary
and a daughter destitute, and the JPs successful y sued to have her marriage