Living in Sin
Page 23
Bentham, a Fabian, told the 1912 Commission about an artisan who left his
drunken wife and hired a housekeeper who soon became his cohabitee.
Similarly, Dr Samson Moore, the Medical Superintendent for Huddersfield,
sympathised with a woman who left her drunken, violent husband and
later lived in a happy irregular union. In addition, women expected men to
provide for them or they had the right to leave and find a man who would
do so. Elizabeth Lidgett, a member of the St Pancras Board of Guardians,
knew a woman who left her husband because he could not find work.
When he and their children went to the workhouse, she began living with
someone else. She complained when the board would not let her see her
children. Lidgett told her the reason was that she was living in adultery, but
the woman said ‘he was no husband for her, and the one that worked for
her she respected.’59
As in affinal unions, the interdependence of poor men and women
repeatedly comes through. Men needed housekeepers and women
needed providers, and neither could live well without the other. Thus, the
disappearance or desertion by a spouse was often decisive in causing new
unions. Throughout the century, husbands emigrated, went to the army,
or got transported or imprisoned for crimes. In all these cases, the wives
had to find new breadwinners. These cases point up John Tosh’s recent
argument that emigration – forced or voluntary – was ‘hugely significant’,
in Victorian England, both because of population decreases and ‘social y
in terms of the drastic realignments of family and community.’60 In fact,
any long absence could lead to adulterous cohabitation, even if it were
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
temporary, as with sailors. Several women lived with other men while their
husbands were at sea. And, in this class, the result of adultery was often
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adulterous cohabitation
two cohabiting couples rather than one. For example, William Simpson,
a Leicester solicitor, testified in 1912 that he had many sailor clients who
came home to find their wives with new partners. Most could not afford
divorce and so they, too, cohabited with new lovers.61
In addition, broken marriages in this class were not always bitter.
If both partners found new loves, they often agreed to give each other
freedom, as many bigamy cases showed. Other sources also have examples
of this phenomenon. Charlie Chaplin’s parents, both actors, married in 1885,
but the marriage effectively ended in 1890. Hannah later lived with another
performer, while Charles Senr. lived with a woman known as Louise until
his death in 1901. Hannah evinced little jealousy and visited Louise’s son
in the workhouse after Louise died young.62 Poor people did not have the
luxury of standing on principle. If the first spouse did not work out, they
got another, whether the law recognised them as spouses or not.
Consequences
Adulterous unions were not illegal, but the participants still faced
intervention from the state. The crux of the matter was that a poor man
had to be able to support both families; if he could not, he had to deal
with poor law guardians who might arrest a man as a ‘vagrant’ if he did
not support his legal family. The police court in Clerkenwell sentenced
Charles Cornel , a gold beater, as a ‘rogue and vagabond’ when he deserted
his wife for another woman in 1863. The new lover had a private income,
and Cornell nevertheless had the nerve to plead that he was unemployed
and thus unable to support his wife. Mr Barker, the judge, sentenced him
to fourteen days at hard labour, considering this conduct ‘disgraceful’.
Later in the century, after revisions to the poor law in 1868, the magistrates
had even more power to compel husbands to maintain their wives and
children, since that act allowed summary courts to punish any parent who
did not support children under fourteen. Magistrates did not hesitate to
use this power. A typical example was Joseph Duffin, who came before the
police court in Lancaster in 1890 for neglecting to support his family. His
wife testified that for the past three months, Duffin had stayed away ‘every
Saturday night’ and final y left altogether. The reason was his cohabitation
with another woman, which the Paisley guardians soon discovered. The
magistrate gave him a month in prison, insisting that ‘he was a disgrace to
manhood.’63
If a man wanted to avoid going to jail, he had to accept responsibility
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
and pay a set weekly amount to his legal family, which meant that his
new family often had very little money. One man complained to the 1912
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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
Commission that he earned only 18s per week. Out of this, he had to pay
his wife 5s, leaving very little for his new family of cohabitee and three
children. He feared falling behind on his payments since ‘if I cant [sic] pay
back arrears I have to go to prison for one month … while the woman who
is one of the best in the world to me has to starve with her three children’.64
In addition, the legal wives had to go to the workhouse first before they
could get help from their erring husbands. In 1888, Agnes Battersby and
her husband Matthew had been married fifteen years and had five children
when he deserted her for another woman. When she went on relief in 1890,
the authorities ordered him to pay 15s per week; how he did this as well
as supporting his cohabitee is a mystery. Because of these problems, men
sometimes went to elaborate lengths to avoid financial ruin, though their
schemes did not always succeed. John Chapman circulated a false report
of his death to his wife when he left her for another woman. All the same,
she discovered the deception and tracked him down, at which point he
told her bluntly that he needed his money to support his new lover and her
children. The police court ordered him to pay 10s a week to Mrs Chapman,
‘struck with the heartlessness of the defendant.’65
Interestingly, legal problems also dogged adulterous wives. Wives
who eloped with new lovers had to be careful about what they took
with them; otherwise they could be arrested for theft, since the wife’s
property belonged to her husband. In 1858, the wife of David Kimpton,
an upholsterer, ran away with the seventeen-year-old lodger, John Budgin,
‘taking with her furniture and wearing apparel to the
value of nearly 60l.’
Kimpton prosecuted them both for robbery. Husbands were not assured
of a victory; judges eventual y determined that a mother could take her
children’s clothing legal y. Stil , some angry husbands put their wives’
lovers behind bars. Robert Elliott successful y prosecuted William Berry,
since Berry not only took Mrs Elliott and the couples’ three children with
him to Leeds, but also ‘a bed, two boxes, four pairs of blankets, six sheets,
two dresses, and two carpets’.66 Though most of the problems fell on the
husband and wife, some of them spread through divided families. Frank
Rowland, a Lancashire solicitor, told the 1912 Royal Commission about
one of his clients, whose wife had left him for a lover. The client had five
children, and almost all of them got into trouble with the police. Rowland
concluded, ‘He did whatever he could, but he real y could not look after
the children as well as working.’67 Such stories again show how crucial
both partners were in a home. Working-class men without wives had
either to break up the home, sending their children away, or to take on a
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
housekeeper, who frequently became a de facto wife.68
Though men had to provide for two families, social and economic
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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adulterous cohabitation
consequences also fell heavily on adulterous women. As in the middle
classes, a man who had already left his wife was not always reliable. Given a
choice between affiliation proceedings and a prison sentence for neglecting
to maintain a wife, most men preferred the former. Hannah G. lived with
her aunt in London, and fell in love with the aunt’s lodger, Meyer L., a fifty-
year-old wine agent. The aunt discovered that Meyer was married, and so
sent her niece, who was only eighteen, to work as a nursery maid. Meyer
sought Hannah out, and she ran away with him. When Hannah became
pregnant, though, he went back to his wife. Similarly, when the woman
was the married party, the man could leave her with few anxieties, since
he had no legal obligation to her. Frances S. was married, but ‘during the
Absence of her husband’, lived with Samuel H., a baker. Unfortunately, after
she became pregnant, Samuel disappeared.69
A woman who lived in adultery could expect little help from
the disapproving middle class. The authorities were unsympathetic to
‘homewreckers’, men or women, though they were harder on the latter.
For instance, the Foundling Hospital rejected all petitions from adulterous
applicants (including those of Hannah and Frances, above). Women who
were already married themselves, even if deceived by their deserting
partners, also got rejected. Louisa A., a needlewoman, was married to a
man who had been transported for a felony, but the Hospital rejected her
child with Henry W., a smith, all the same (Henry was also married). In
fact, the investigators rarely accepted claims of ignorance. Jane R., a lady’s
maid, stated that she married a groom, James C., not knowing he was
already wed. They stayed together eight months, but he deserted her when
she became pregnant. The investigators could find no record of a marriage
between Jane and James, so believed Mrs C.’s contention that ‘the Petitioner
is the principal cause of C---- deserting his Wife & family.’ Jane’s petition
was also rejected.70
Moreover, most state agencies would not deal with any adulterous
couples no matter what their reasons. Charles Barker, a solicitor in
Sunderland, told the 1912 Royal Commission about a pair of unhappily
married people who decided to live together. Both their spouses were also
living with other people, so their union broke up no homes. Stil , when
they fell on hard times, the magistrates refused them ‘because they were
living in adultery’. Nor would private charities help. Dr William Evans,
the Chief Medical Officer for Bradford, told the 1912 commissioners about
a man whose wife left him and became a prostitute. The man persuaded
a servant to live with him, with whom he was happy: ‘Yet when il , no
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
charitable society would come to their assistance, because they were not
married.’ In order to avoid rewarding immorality, most charities also
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living in sin
rejected illegitimate children, and many London crèches would not take
them either.71
Given this situation, married women were reluctant to cohabit. Several
of the witnesses in the 1912 Royal Commission testified that husbands
found new partners more quickly after the break-up of a marriage than
wives.72 But women’s situation left them vulnerable; though they delayed,
they too eventual y lived with new mates. A divorce case in 1904 il ustrates
this point. A woman’s husband was violent and unfaithful, and she worked
for three years to earn the money for a divorce. Yet the Divorce Court
refused her when they found she lived with a ‘young gentleman’ after she
had become ill and lost her job. The judge did not consider her economic
plight an adequate excuse for adultery.73 Because of these problems,
many working-class men and women gave up on the idea of divorce and
cohabited. Frank Rowland, a Lancashire solicitor, testified about a woman
whose unfaithful husband had given her a venereal disease. She had met
someone new and wanted a divorce, but Rowland warned her it would
cost a minimum of £25 to £30. After eighteen months, she gave up trying
to save the money and lived with her new lover. Indeed, even if a woman
could resist a new love, she often struggled to live on the maintenance she
received from her husband – if she got it at al . One woman who wrote
to the Royal Commission had separated from her husband and received
maintenance, yet she had to send her two sons to a state home because she
could not support them. She was now considering a bigamous marriage
proposal because she was ‘so longing for my two little lads to be with me
again’.74 With so many incentives, only the strongest-willed women could
live for decades, eking out an existence with no hope for remarriage.
Family and friends
The reaction of wider families to adulterous cohabitation varied. Though
some families reluctantly accepted it, many were unhappy. In particular,
women’s families opposed the adultery, seeing only ruin for their daughters.
Hannah G.’s aunt, who sent her away from the married lodger,
was one
such example. Anne Barnham’s parents persuaded her to leave Robert
Cooper, even though she had two children with him, because he was
already married. Similarly, Caroline Woodhead’s parents always disliked
her relationship with John Brookes, a lacemaker, since she was still married
to a printer. After two years, her mother wrote to say that if she would
give up Brookes, she could return home. She promptly did so, to Brookes’s
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
fury.75 Though working-class standards were laxer, most families preferred
marriage, or at least the hope of one; a man married already could not
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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.
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adulterous cohabitation
offer security. Significantly, though, all of these examples indicate that the
families did not cut themselves off from erring daughters. On the contrary,
they tried to help; disapproval in the working class did not necessarily
mean ostracism.
The ambivalence and tensions within the family were mirrored in
the attitude of friends and neighbours. Most neighbours were sympathetic
if the cases were hard.76 By 1900, poor couples understood all too well
their class disadvantages as regards divorce. A typical letter to the Royal
Commission was one from a servant who had separated from her brutal
husband. He lived with another woman, but she had no hope for a divorce:
‘It seems such hard lines that he should spoil my life and go free.’77 In 1911,
the Women’s Cooperative Guild, which represented upper working-class
women, surveyed their members about divorce reform, finding a majority
in favour of it. Particularly, women wanted equal grounds between men
and women and lower costs. Some of the members also asked for wider
grounds, including cruelty, insanity, and desertion, and a small majority
supported divorce by mutual consent. As one secretary put it, ‘All our branch
members … were most emphatic that where the husband and wife could
not live happily together it was no real marriage.’78 These responses helped