Living in Sin
Page 26
Also, cohabitation was economical y flexible. Particularly in the first half of
the century, some men and women cohabited to guard against economic
disaster; should things go wrong, they could go back to their natal homes.
Both Gandy and Gillis credit women’s earning power in weaving with a
more relaxed view towards marriage, and unmarried women did not have
to go to the workhouse if their partners became unemployed or il .6
As cottage industry declined, these types of economic motives
disappeared, but others emerged. James Greenwood reported that for poor
London couples ‘the expense attending the process … makes matrimony
the exception and not the rule’. Similarly, a witness in Frederick Andrews’s
murder trial admitted that he and his ‘missus’ were cohabiting, but insisted
‘we shall get married when we can afford the money.’ Some cohabitees
particularly resented the church taking fees. Henry Mayhew interviewed a
street buyer who claimed he ‘real y couldn’t afford to pay the parson … If
it’s so good to go to church for being married, it oughtn’t to cost a poor man
nothing; he shouldn’t be charged for being good.’ Mayhew also found anti-
clericalism among street-sellers; they argued that marrying ‘is only to put
money into the clergyman’s, or as these people say the “parson’s,” pocket.’7
All the same, many in the clergy removed the financial impediments
and this did not always result in more weddings. A clergyman’s wife in East
London persuaded a young cohabiting couple to marry by paying for the
expenses and getting her husband to cancel his fees. When the wedding
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day came, though, the two did not show up. The man explained that he
was offered a job at the last minute and ‘I couldn’t lose five bob just for
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
living in sin
the sake o’ getting married.’ Mary McCarthy, who worked as a Methodist
missionary in London, was equal y disil usioned when she and James
Yeames, a clergyman, provided clothing, a ring, and a wedding breakfast
for a cohabiting couple only to have them disappear, probably having
pawned the dress and ring. Yeames concluded, ‘We have been grievously
deceived and disappointed.’8
Thus, other reasons were important, and these were heavily gendered.
Though sometimes both partners were uninterested, more often the man
was reluctant. Men faced few disadvantages and gained many advantages
from cohabiting. For example, if a woman did not prove satisfactory, a
cohabitee could desert her with few consequences. In contrast, as a London
man told Charles Booth, ‘If I married my woman I should never be sure
of my tea’. Mayhew also interviewed a coster girl who disapproved of
cohabitation, because, she claimed, ‘if he can turn a poor gal off, as soon
as he tires of her, he begins to have noises with her, and then gets quit of
her altogether.’9 Ironical y, because of men’s economic power, women who
had not vowed obedience sometimes had less room to manoeuvre. The
upper classes had changed the law of marriage in 1753 and the Poor Law
in 1834 to make women insist on marriage, but because women’s economic
opportunities were so limited, they often took support without a wedding.
Women entered free unions in order to parlay the sexual relationship
into a more permanent bond; unfortunately, many were disappointed.
Susan Mumm’s work on Anglican penitentiaries revealed many such
women, and Foundling Hospital records also include instances of men
eloping with lovers, without long-term intentions. Once the women had
left with them, they were vulnerable to desertion, having cut themselves
off from their friends.10 In other cases women left home or work because
they became pregnant. With nowhere else to go, the women agreed to live
in lodgings with the men as their wives. These cases particularly point
up women’s economic weakness. Harriet B. was a needlewoman, living
with her mother. She courted a lodger, George M., in 1851. When she got
pregnant, she lived with him until two weeks before the birth of the baby,
at which point he disappeared. When her landlady questioned her, ‘she
acknowledged that she was not married’. As this last case indicates, couples
had to pass as married, since most landladies would not accept unmarried
tenants. Mary B. lived with Isadore S., a black sailor, for some months and
‘passed as Mrs S.’ with their landlady. Only after he had lost his job and left
did Mary admit she was not married.11
Men could indulge in such unions without losing their jobs or
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
marriageability. They ‘tried out’ women as wives, but could change their
minds if they did not find what they wanted. The women, often in poor
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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
professions, gambled with their attractiveness to find a provider. One
young tramping woman told Mayhew that she had lived with her father, a
gardener, in great poverty, making shirts from the age of twelve. When she
was seventeen, she met a carpenter who ‘told me if I’d come to London with
him he’d do anything for me.’ She final y agreed, but he soon abandoned
her. She confessed, ‘I knew it was wrong to go away and live with him
without being married; but I was wretched at home, and he told me he
would make me his wife, and I believed him.’12 The dangers for poor women
in cohabitation could not be clearer. Yet many women took the chance,
mainly because their jobs were such poorly-paid drudgery.
Marriage conferred a legal obligation for the husband to support
his wife, but a cohabitee had no such right. And even when men did not
purposely desert women, they left their families in tenuous positions when
they died. Mary Ann L. lived with James C. for seventeen years, and they
had ten children. When he died in 1849, the Foundling Hospital authorities
refused to help a woman who had lived ‘in a state of Concubinage’. The
hospital also rejected Elizabeth N., who had lived with James S. for seven
years and had two children when he died in 1836. She was so confused
about her marital status that at first she put ‘widow’ on her application,
but her assertion of respectability made no difference to the Hospital.13
Some of the women who appealed to religious charities were also long-
time cohabitees. Susan Mumm sums up the problem well when she quotes
the casebook of an Anglican penite
ntiary: ‘Nurse in private family – got
entangled by promise of marriage. Lived with man 11 years. Had 4 children.
He deserted her. Work House.’ These clipped phrases contained years of
struggle and a downward spiral for mother and children.14
Men refused to marry for a number of reasons. Occasional y small
class differences were enough to give a man pause. Joseph Tonge, a publican,
lived with Sarah Langford, a mil hand, for many years and they had five
children together. He nevertheless married the landlady of a prosperous
inn in 1886. Sarah had no inheritance, and his freedom to leave her meant
that he could do better. At other times, the issue was the woman’s sexual
impurity. In other words, having ‘fallen’ with their lovers, these women
ruined their marriage chances. Mary Turner lived for three months with
William White, she claimed because he promised to marry her, but his
feelings changed when she had sex with him. White had no problem with
marriage in general; he got engaged to another woman soon after he broke
up with Mary.15 Whatever the reason, men without legal ties were able to
find more congenial partners.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
In close-knit communities, women sometimes found allies to help
urge marriage; clergy and landlords were highly disapproving of irregular
127 j
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Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,
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Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
living in sin
unions. In 1843, Revd Francis Fulford remonstrated with one of his
Cambridgeshire parishioners, a man named Nash, for living with Mary
Newman. Fulford knew Nash was the reluctant party, since ‘The woman
would marry gladly.’16 Later in the century, Francis Kilvert was scandalised
by the cohabitation of Stephen Davies and Myra Rees in 1870. Kilvert wrote
in his diary, ‘People are very indignant about this affair … But what is to
be done?’ Less than two months later, Kilvert reported that the landlord
visited Davies, and, ‘finding him living in open concubinage … gave him
notice.’ Though the landlord hurt both Stephen and Myra with his decision,
sometimes the stories had happier endings for the women. Kilvert brought
equal pressure on another couple who were living together, final y getting
them to wed fourteen months later. He was also relieved when Edward
Morgan and his cohabitee married in 1871, again blaming the groom for
the delay, since the woman ‘begged and prayed her lover to marry her
before he seduced her and afterwards.’17 In these cases, the interference
from authorities helped get the man to the altar. Thus, the reaction to such
interventions differed between the genders, with women more welcoming
to – perhaps even grateful for – religious pressure. But these instances were
limited to smaller communities with energetic clergymen.
Obviously, the double standard of sexuality benefited men, but
some women also refused to marry. They, too, sought the main advantage
of cohabitation – that they could change their minds. Indeed, the most
common reason for women was that they wanted to be able to leave if
a partner ‘misbehaved’. A charity worker insisted in 1881, ‘the dread of
granting absolute power over her to any of her lovers is one cause for
women preferring free love’. Dr Ethel Bentham testified to the 1912 Royal
Commission about two women who eschewed marriage altogether,
since they ‘preferred to be able to “get shut of him if he does not behave
himself”’. The Foundling Hospital records also sometimes indicate that
women feared being linked to violent men. Harriet B. lived with Robert
I. for eighteen months, but ‘she would not marry him on account of his
dreadful Temper.’18 Though women might have been mistaken in thinking
they could leave without incident, they believed they had a better chance
of escape if unmarried.
In fact, some women wanted economic and sexual independence, just
like men. Widows with property had much to lose with remarriage. Harriet
Stallion refused to marry Leonard Tillett, though they lived together in
her lodging house, since she preferred to keep her annuity under her own
control. Other women, particularly younger ones, wanted to be able to find
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
better partners. A scavenger told Mayhew that he had offered to marry
his cohabitee, but ‘she went to the hopping … and never came back. I
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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
heered [sic] that she’d taken up with an Irish hawker’. Rather than being
ruined, this young woman used her unmarried state to find a man she liked
better.19 Nonetheless, these women were the minority, because of economic
limitations and childcare concerns. In the poorest classes, as in the rest of
Victorian society, the sexual double standard worked in men’s favour.
Age, race, family, occupation
In addition to gendered motives, couples had other reasons to prefer
cohabitation. Most commentators insisted that age was important. Booth
argued that even in the roughest neighbourhoods, most young people
married, but older couples often did not bother. Reay’s examples of
common-law unions included several that occurred after the woman had
already borne illegitimate children or had become widows.20 My violence
cases indicate that many couples cohabited after having been legal y
married or in middle age. In 92 cases out of 217, at least one partner was
married to someone else and 17 more had a widow/er. In another 23, the
couple began living together when at least one partner was over forty. Over
half of the cases (132), then, involved people who had already had a major
relationship or were middle-aged. Of course, some of these couples could
not marry, but these numbers indicate that age was a factor.
Mature couples may have had bad experiences they did not wish to
repeat, or they may simply have grown old enough not to worry as much
about public opinion. For instance, they had less concern about bearing
illegitimate children. One of Reay’s examples, Harriet Lees, had eight
illegitimate children between 1858 and 1879. The father of three of them
was Alfred Tong, who eventual y lived with her, probably after her father
died in 1873 (when she was thirty-nine). Clearly, after eight illegitimate
births, Harriet was not concerned about her reputation, so did not insist
on marriage. Even if they did not want to marry, older couples wanted
a companion for their later years, and needed someone to help with any
children. Women, es
pecial y widows without property, needed economic
help. Johanna Nevin was a widow with two children when she began living
with James Flynn, a factory operative. He was violent and threatening, but
she stayed with him for two years, probably because of her children.21
Another factor that could affect both people in the relationship was
race and ethnicity. For one thing, Mayhew insisted that some nationalities
(such as Irish and Jewish couples) were less prone to cohabitation than
others. A second way that race could be a factor was when there were mixed
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
relationships. Although mixed-race partners do not appear in the records
often, they certainly existed, and racial barriers may have inhibited couples
129 j
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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
from marriage. Mayhew interviewed a prostitute whose father was a black
seaman. Her mother, who was white, would not marry him even when she
became pregnant; instead, she married a white boxmaker.22 Laura Tabili
has shown that port towns had many mixed-race marriages, at least by the
early twentieth century, but the difficulties of reconciling family and friends
to the matches may have discouraged some legal unions. And sometimes
the black partner was not enthusiastic, as in the case of sailors like Isadore
S. Indeed, since many male Afro-Britons were at sea, they clustered in a
profession that had more cohabitation.23
Other factors, while not decisive, could influence the couples’ choice.
If the couples’ families disdained marriage, they were likely to do the same.
Some of Reay’s examples had multiple common-law unions within the
same kin group. Booth’s cases also showed how free unions ran in families.
Martin and Eliza Rooney had three children, and all cohabited; in addition,
both of Eliza’s sisters and one of her nephews did as wel . In other instances,
the neighbourhood as a whole influenced the couple. If most of the families
who lived on a street did not marry, new couples did not do so either. A