Living in Sin
Page 24
to balance out views of working-class women as unvaryingly conservative
about marriage; by 1912, leaders in the working class also defined ‘true’
marriages differently from the law.
Since most sources privilege the artisan class, the attitude of the rest
of the working class is harder to determine. Evidence from the violence
cases indicates that many adulterous couples were regular members of
their neighbourhoods. When John Banks killed Ann Gilligan (married to
a soldier) in 1866 in Lancaster, four female neighbours testified to his ill-
treatment of her, and John Walsh, a weaver, had intervened when the two
argued in a pub. Banks and Gilligan lived ‘in sin’ and drank heavily, but
their neighbours, all employed and married, tried to help them. Similarly,
in 1895 in Nottingham, Edward Kesteven, a framework knitter, lived with
Sarah Oldham, a dressmaker whose husband had deserted her. They lived
in a row of houses among three sets of married couples. After Edward killed
Sarah, all the neighbours testified, and their evidence made clear that the
irregular union made no difference to the daily interplay among them.79
Numerous other examples show the same kind of mixing; the working
class had to accept wider sexual parameters, since they relied on each other
for survival.
The working class was not monolithic, so not all neighbours were
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
supportive. Particularly in the respectable, artisan class, such couples tried
to be discreet. Also, I have few rural cases of violence among cohabitees,
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living in sin
which may indicate that the rural poor were less tolerant of sexual
immorality. Self-consciously respectable families might also be censorious,
no matter how poor. John Gillis points to working-class families like that
of Richard Hoggett, who were frankly horrified by any breach in the moral
code. Gillis, in fact, gives several examples of families who felt so disgraced
by various scandals that they moved away. In addition, a minority of
witnesses in 1912 insisted that a woman ‘living in adultery’ would be
‘drummed out of the neighbourhood’.80
This disapproval did not mean that adulterous unions did not
occur, but that such couples tried to pass as married. Herbert Wrigley, a
Manchester solicitor, pointed out in 1912 that most such couples simply
moved to a new neighbourhood and lived ‘as husband and wife’. If the
method failed, however, the couple could face serious consequences. Dr
Ethel Bentham cited a case where a married man and his second partner
lived together discreetly. After a few years, the man’s wife turned up,
demanding custody of her three children; she was so disruptive that the
couple emigrated to America.81 All the same, as bigamy cases make clear,
only some irregular unions provoked neighbourly unease. Neighbours
condemned ‘homewreckers’, but not all adultery. And those who were able
to keep their secret lived among their respectable friends with no one the
wiser.Despite this flexibility, women felt guilty about their position, as did
some of the men. Norah M., who lived with her lodger, knew that she was
not the same as a married woman: ‘people look down on a woman so if she
lives as I am doing.’ Though they bowed to necessity, these couples preferred
marriage. One woman, whose husband was in prison, eventual y lived with
her lodger. Though she was ‘general y respected’ by the neighbours, she
knew the church would disapprove. Stil , she insisted, ‘God couldn’t blame
any poor woman for giving her children a chance whatever the parson
might say.’82 Again, the marital rebellion, because it was from necessity
rather than choice, was limited. These couples wanted to marry and blamed
the law and the church for their defiance.
Successes and failures
Since many of my sources on the working class are cases of violence, stories
of disastrous second unions are more common than in the middle class.
After al , a man or woman whose alcoholism or brutality wrecked her or
his first marriage was not a good marital risk. All the same, many second
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
unions were happy. Dr Scurfield, for instance, annexed twenty cases for the
Royal Commission to support his testimony. In each, an unhappy marriage
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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
had been followed by a happy free union. Cases from the Cooperative
Guild survey also included many happier, though illegal, second unions.83
In addition, even in some of the cases of violence, happier times in these
unions appear. Thomas Pagden and Caroline Burton lived together for ten
years, apparently content, though her earlier marriage had failed. They
would probably have continued had she not become mental y il . George
Nicholson deserted his first wife shortly after their marriage. In 1880, he
went to live with a new lover. Nicholson’s unemployment and alcoholism
eventual y ruined the relationship, but it was successful for fifteen years.84
As in the middle class, most adulterous working-class cohabitees
saw themselves as married. Cohabitees fulfilled spousal duties, called each
other husband and wife, and only exposed the nature of their unions when
forced. Frederick Hinson adored Maria Death, though he was married to
someone else. According to a witness, ‘He always called her his wife, and
treated her with just as much respect as if she was’.85 Also, the emotional
attachment of many of these relationships was as strong as in marriages.
John Snape lived with Rachel Taberner after having left his wife and four
children. He killed her because of jealousy, confessing, ‘People said I was
out of my reason in thinking so much about her.’ The Times concluded
that Snape’s ‘passion for her appears to have run to a mad and ridiculous
extreme’, but his story was common. Violent incidents indicate strong
attachments; the leading reason for violence was jealousy (81 of 149 cases).
Robert Cooper, for instance, was already married when he committed
bigamy with Annie Barnham. When she left him upon discovering the
truth, he became distraught and obsessive. He wrote to her, ‘Annie, my
dearest, dear, sweet Annie, how I love you’ (and much more in the same
vein) before he shot her.86 In other words, the relationship was the critical
factor, not the legal status. Though both partners were free to leave, this did
not always reconcile the des
erted partner to the separation. Most adulterous
couples considered themselves married, stayed together in the face of grave
problems, and suffered emotional trauma when the unions failed.
Again, as in the middle class, the marital rebellion was muted. These
couples were committed to each other and passed as married; in addition,
most of them mirrored the expectations of husbands and wives. Those who
could articulate it stressed the need for divorce reform rather than disdain
for the institution and regretted that they could not marry. Like the middle
class, they made ‘marriages’ by assuming the roles of husbands and wives.
In this, they challenged the strict marital laws of their time.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
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living in sin
Conclusion
Adulterous cohabitees overall shared many similarities. Couples in both
classes suffered from not being able to divorce and yet refused to accept
their position. They faced many penalties for their decisions, though the
working class had to deal with the intervention of the state more often.
Both groups experienced family opposition; moreover, women suffered
more than men in both groups. All were insistent that theirs were ‘true’
marriages, as opposed to their moribund first unions, but would almost
certainly have preferred marriage. Authorities criticised the working
class for supposedly ignoring marital ties, but they did not see the desire
for marriage that stands out to the historian. Like bigamists and those
who practiced affinal marriages, these couples were firmly in favour of
marriage.
Their attitude put them at odds with others in the working class who
could not see the point of the ceremony, whose class differences made
marriage impossible, and who openly disdained marriage as an institution.
These groups were a different type of threat to marriage, seeing it as
irrelevant or even pernicious. In theory, they could have married legal y, so
they had more trouble justifying their sexual irregularity to family, friends,
and society. On the other hand, they also often lived among groups which
tolerated or even encouraged marital dissent, and this mitigated the social
scorn. In addition, because they had no legal impediments, they dealt with
the state less directly, moving outside its parameters. In a different way,
though, they too challenged the Hardwicke regime and ‘Victorianism’,
especial y those in the parallel social systems of the very poor and the
demimonde.
Notes
1 Shanley, Feminism, Marriage and the Law, pp. 39–44; M. Poovey, Uneven Developments:
The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988), pp. 51–88.
2 R. Wolff, Sensational Victorian: The Life and Fiction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (New
York: Garland, 1979), pp. 80–102; Lancaster Guardian, 6 March 1880, p. 2.
3 W. Scott , Jefferson Hogg (London: Jonathan Cape, 1951), p. 136; S. Norman (ed.), After
Shel ey: The Letters of Thomas Jefferson Hogg to Jane Wil iams (London: Oxford University
Press, 1934), p. xiv.
4 Quilter, Is Marriage a Failure? , p. 174.
5 H. Pearson, Labby: The Life and Character of Henry Labouchere (New York: Harper and
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Brothers, 1937), p. 63.
6 J. R. Guy, Compassion and the Art of the Possible: Dr Southwood Smith as Social Reformer
and Public Health Pioneer (Cambridgeshire: Octavia Hill Society & Birthplace Museum
j
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Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
adulterous cohabitation
Trust, 1994), p. 11; C. Yeldham, Margaret Gil ies RWS: Unitarian Painter of Mind and
Emotion, 1803–1887 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), pp. 11–33.
7 J. Halperin, Gissing: A Life in Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 272–83;
M. Collie, George Gissing: A Biography (Folkstone, Kent: William Dawson and Sons, Ltd,
1977), pp. 152–5; P. Coustil as (ed.), The Letters of George Gissing to Gabriel e Fleury (New
York: The New York Public Library, 1964), pp. 90–2.
8 F. E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent: The Monthly Repository, 1806–1838 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1944), pp. 192–5; R. Garnett, The Life of W. J. Fox:
Public Teacher and Social Reformer, 1786–1864 (London: John Lane, 1909), pp. 43–5; 156–
66, quote from p. 43.
9 M. Asker, Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia (London: Viking, 1998), pp. 7–12; J.
E. Mack, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence (Boston, MA: Little, Brown,
and Co., 1976), pp. 1–13; J. R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself (London: The Bodley Head,
1968), pp. 11–28; 49–52; 150–76; P. Parker, Ackerley: A Life of J. R. Ackerley (New York:
Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989), pp. 7–14; 40–1.
10 W. Fredeman (ed.), The Letters of Pictor Ignotus: Wil iam Bell Scott’s Correspondence with
Alice Boyd, 1859–1884 (Manchester: John Rylands University Library, 1976), pp. 4–13; A
Pre-Raphaelite Gazette: The Penkill Letters of Arthur Hughes to Wil iam Bell Scott and
Alice Boyd, 1886–97 (Manchester: John Rylands University Library, 1967), pp. 6–9; W.
Minto (ed.), Autobiographical Notes of the Life of Wil iam Bell Scott 2 vols (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1892), II, 293.
11 G. Haight (ed.), George Eliot Letters 7 vols (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1954–55), II, 349; Eliot to Vincent Holbeche, 13 June 1857; Hughes, George Eliot, pp. 55,
190–2; Coustil as, Letters of George Gissing to Gabriel e Fleury, p. 75; letter from Gissing
to Fleury, 29 October 1898; R. Gettman, George Gissing and H. G. Wel s: Their Friendship
and Correspondence (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 229–33.
12 B. Belford, Violet: The Story of the Irrepressible Violet Hunt (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1990), p. 185; J. Hardwick, An Immodest Violet: The Life of Violet Hunt (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1990), p. 105; D. Goldring, South Lodge: Reminiscences of Violet Hunt, Ford
Madox Ford and the English Review Circle (London: Constable & Co., 1943), pp. 97–8.
13 Coustil as, Letters of George Gissing to Gabriel e Fleury, pp. 102–3; letter dated 4 February
1899; Halperin, Gissing, p. 287.
14 Haight, George Eliot Letters, III, 366, note 5; Eliot to Barbara Bodichon, 26 December
1860, pp. 365–6; Ashton, George Henry Lewes, p. 211; Hughes, George Eliot, p. 252.
15 Belford, Violet, pp. 175–87; A. Mizener, The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox
Ford (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1971), pp. 209–12; Coustil as, Letters of George
Gissing to Gabriel
e Fleury, pp. 41–4; 68–70; 90–5; 101–6; Halperin, Gissing, pp. 281–3.
16 F. Karl, George Eliot: Voice of a Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), pp. 249–54;
301–5; Hughes, George Eliot, pp. 192–3; 340; Ashton, George Henry Lewes, pp. 120–39;
Haight, George Eliot Letters, II, 331, 341–2, 346–50; III, 23–30.
17 Wolff, Sensational Victorian, p. 226; Belford, Violet, pp. 152–3; 159; 169–70; Goldring, South Lodge, pp. 92–3; 120–1; V. Hunt, I Have This to Say: The Story of My Flurried Years (New
York: Boni and Liveright, 1926), pp. 108–9; 144.
18 Coustil as, Letters of George Gissing to Gabriel e Fleury, p. 150; quoted by Gissing in his
letter to Fleury, 26 January 1902.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
19 H. G. Wel s, Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary
Brain (Since 1866) (New York: Macmil an, 1934), pp. 329, 355–6; quote from p. 356.
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living in sin
20 Asker, Lawrence, p. 14; J. Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T. E.
Lawrence (London: Heinemann, 1989), pp. 29–30.
21 Scott, Jefferson Hogg, pp. 149; 189–91; 198–202; 217–19; 272.
22 R. M. Myers, Reluctant Expatriate: The Life of Harold Frederic (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1995), pp. 18–19; 92–105; B. Bennett, The Damnation of Harold Frederic: His Lives
and Works (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), pp. 45–52; P. Coustil as (ed.),
London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: The Diary of George Gissing,
Novelist (Hassocks, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1978), p. 413.
23 Lancaster Guardian, 8 September 1860, p. 5.
24 Bennett, Damnation of Harold Frederic, pp. 8–9, 50 (for quote); S. Wertheim and P.
Sorrentino (eds), The Correspondence of Stephen Crane 2 vols (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), II, 402–3; Ackerley, My Father and Myself, pp. 154–7.
25 British Library of Political and Economic Science. Mill-Taylor Collection. Vol. 27, #32, fol.
60. Eliza Flower to Harriet Taylor, n.d.