Living in Sin
Page 28
little criticism’. Roberts thought this exception ‘strange’, but it does point
up the careful calculations made in assessing respectability in the working
classes.44
Prostitutes, ‘criminals’, and the demimonde
As the above discussion made clear, most of the poor who lived in cohabiting
unions lived among and interacted with their married neighbours. They,
then, were not part of the ‘criminal classes’. Those who made a living
solely from crime, as well as full-time prostitutes with their ‘fancy men’
or ‘bullies’, made up this category. They had little respect for the law, and,
because of the dangers of prosecution, they had good reason to keep their
relationships open-ended. Though many of these couples probably moved
in and out of criminal life, the authorities and middle-class observers did
not make many distinctions in dealing with them, seeing them as unstable
and irrational. Like tramps and soldiers, though, these couples had logical
reasons for cohabiting.
Prostitutes and their bullies made up one segment of this population.
Historians disagree about the degree to which prostitutes were separated out
from the regular working class.45 The evidence I have collected indicates a
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
continuum in the working class, rather than a strict divide between criminal,
rough, and respectable. Prostitutes sometimes associated with labouring
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living in sin
men, living in the same neighbourhoods as the respectable poor, or with
criminals in ‘low’ districts, or they moved between these groups. Unless
a keen observer, a middle-class reporter would not see where one strata
shaded into the other. For example, three of the five women killed by Jack
the Ripper, identified as prostitutes, were either in cohabiting relationships
or had been so in the past; John Kel y, who lived with Catherine Eddowes,
insisted she was not a prostitute at al . These women were examples of the
movement between streetwalking, cohabitation, and marriage that many
poor women experienced.46
That prostitutes lived with lawbreakers was the firm opinion of many
observers. Robert Broughton, a London police magistrate, told the Select
Committee on Drunkenness in 1834 that all prostitutes in his part of London
lived with thieves.47 Mayhew, writing in mid-century, identified such men
as ‘fancy men’ or ‘bullies’. The former were part-time criminals who acted
as companions to prostitutes, ‘loose characters, half thieves half loafers.’
Bullies, on the other hand, he associated with brothels. At the end of the
century, at least in port cities, bullies were more likely to be with a single
prostitute or small groups of them, since the women needed protection
once the brothels closed. Bullies helped rob unwary clients and enforced
payment for the prostitutes’ services.48
Though they did not articulate them, these couples had many reasons
for not marrying. Few men, even criminal ones, wanted to wed a woman
who regularly had sex with other men. In Shrewsbury, Emma Marston,
a prostitute, lived with Henry Dorricott, a man with thirteen criminal
convictions. The two lived a life of constant violence, and Emma also drank
too much. Despite this, Emma told a neighbour that she stayed with him
because he said he would marry her. He had not, however, fulfilled this
promise by the time he killed her.49 Perhaps, too, the women were uneasy
about marrying such violent men, thus giving the latter even more power.
According to Arthur Harding, ‘Spuds’ Murphy ‘lived off of and terrorized a
succession of women’ in the East End of London in the Edwardian period;
he hardly made an ideal husband. Often, though, the choice made little
difference. Despite putative ‘freedom’, few women broke free from bullies,
and they remained faithful and handed over their earnings. Booth, in fact,
called the relationship ‘something of the character of a marriage – the tie
a lasting one, and the woman often devoted to the man even though very
roughly treated’.50
As this last remark indicates, observers tended to sentimentalise
prostitutes, perhaps equating them with Nancy from Charles Dickens’s
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Oliver Twist. Though some women matched this stereotype, these
relationships were often more complex than this characterisation allowed.
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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
Some men who lived with prostitutes had jobs, for example, and others
footed the couples’ bil s.51 Since many working-class women were only
part-time prostitutes, they lived with working-class men in the short or
long term, whether or not the latter were ‘bullies’. Confusions came from
the middle-class tendency to call any woman who lived with a man outside
of marriage a prostitute. For example, in reports on a violent incident in
1884, one newspaper called Rosina Squires a charwoman, while another
called her a prostitute. George Townsend, her cohabitee, was both a farrier
and a ‘fancy man’. Probably the two subsisted on varying combinations of
activities, but newspaper writers did not understand the survival strategies
of the poor, and the authorities could be equal y obtuse. John Jenkinson
was arrested in Lancaster in 1910, accused of pimping for Ann Hornby, a
‘well-known prostitute’. Jenkinson claimed their income came a variety of
sources (a lodger, for example), but the magistrates did not believe him.
Ann had been convicted of prostitution, and he lived with her, so he must
be her bul y. He got two months at hard labour.52
Prostitution was not illegal, but vagrancy, public drunkenness,
and violence were. As a result, local and national authorities intervened
between prostitutes and bullies regularly. As with other violence cases,
the authorities blamed the men for the problems; a local magistrate, Mr
Slade, when sentencing a bul y for violence in 1884, called him ‘a cowardly,
worthless fellow’. The state became further entangled in these relationships
when Parliament passed a law in 1898 that empowered the police to
arrest for vagrancy any man living from the earnings of a prostitute. In a
Lancaster case in 1905, the police court sentenced Thomas Lafferty to two
months for doing so. The presiding magistrate lectured him, ‘He was not
a man but an apology for one … When he came out he must try to be a
man.’ Interestingly, this view of pimps crossed
class lines, since working-
class men despised pimps as wel . Mayhew claimed that cabmen who lived
with prostitutes were known by a ‘very gross appel ation’ by other drivers.
Similarly, Arthur Sullivan, a long-time petty criminal in the East End of
London, saved his deepest contempt for such men, despite his general
indifference to moral issues.53
These relationships involved more mutuality than commonly
believed, even in violence. Though some prostitutes were bullied, others
were tough and pugnacious. Emma Marston, though she eventual y died
from a beating, ‘was a violent woman when drunk’ and often held her
own against Dorricott.54 In addition, some of the men, even those in the
criminal classes, became attached to their prostitute cohabitees. Victor
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Bailey details two examples of men who lived with prostitutes and killed
themselves when the women rejected them or appeared to have done
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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
so. The women also were not always attached solely through fear. Ellen
Greenwood, an eighteen-year-old prostitute in London, tried to commit
suicide in 1861 over her live-in lover, who had left her for another woman.55
Women also willingly shielded their lovers from the law, though this
was partly a fear of retaliation or losing economic support. In Lancaster,
Charity Platt, an ‘unfortunate’, gave an alibi for her cohabitee, John Nesbitt,
for a mugging, even though he had apparently bloodied her nose. Her
behaviour demonstrates a common dynamic: many working-class women
identified more with men in their own class – even violent ones – than with
men or women who wanted to ‘save’ them.56
A similar type of relationship were those women who lived with
men in the ‘criminal’ classes but did not resort to prostitution. These
couples probably moved in and out of criminal behaviour, depending on
opportunity, but when doing illegal activities, they worked together. Most
avoided marriage, since they would likely have spel s in prison. Mayhew told
several stories of pairs of thieves who lived together and then separated as
circumstances dictated. Female pickpockets, for instance, often lived with
‘pickpockets, burglars, resetters, and other infamous characters’, changing
partners as necessary. An advantage to staying unmarried was that the man
could put stolen property in the name of his paramour; with no legal tie
between them, the courts could not prove she had no right to it. However, a
disadvantage was that cohabitees could testify against their lovers in court
as wives could not.57 At any rate, many sources showed ‘criminal’ women
and men working together, and the women sometimes went to prison for
‘abetting’ the crimes.58
The constant intervention of the state in the ‘criminal’ classes was a
given, and certainly the courts disapproved of men living with prostitutes
and arrested lawbreakers when they could. But Victorian courts could be
surprisingly sympathetic to cohabiting relationships even in this class.
Edward Agar, the mastermind behind the ‘Great Bullion Robbery’ of 1855,
lived with Fanny Kay, a barmaid, and they had a child by the time of the
heist. Agar was arrested on an unrelated charge some weeks later. He asked
William Pierce, one of his partners, to give Fanny his share of the money,
but Pierce did not do so. Fanny told Agar about it, and he turned state’s
evidence, resulting in the arrest and conviction of all the robbers. Despite
Agar’s theft, Justice Martin was most incensed by Pierce, lecturing him, ‘A
greater vil ain than you are, I believe, does not exist.’ Even more ironical y,
Agar’s money was not subject to seizure, since Agar was not convicted
of burglary. So the English courts awarded it to Kay and her child.59 The
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
relationship of these couples to the state was usual y antagonistic, but, as
in violence cases, the justice system sometimes gave left-handed support to
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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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the demimonde and the very poor
cohabiting unions.
A further complication is the danger of overstating the ‘free and
easy’ sexuality of these couples. Criminal men expected fidelity; though
the relationships were temporary, they were exclusive (at least for the
women) while they lasted. Mayhew interviewed a burglar who lived with
an Irish coster-girl for a time, but he left her after she flirted with another
man.60 And the number of violent incidents due to jealousy indicates that
men (and some women) in this class did not accept changes of allegiance
indifferently. In addition, these couples often argued over the same things –
money, drink, and fidelity – as the rest of the working classes. For all these
reasons, the difference between the very poor and the ‘criminal’ classes was
often a fine line, hard for the middle classes to see.
Deliberate cohabitation
Most of those who chose not to marry were working class, but a small
minority were not. These lower-middle-class and middle-class cohabitees
divided into two groups. First, some were in professions that skated on the
bare edge of respectability, such as performers (actors, singers, dancers), or
bohemian occupations such as writers and painters. These groups, along
with professional mistresses/courtesans (explored in the next chapter),
made up the demimonde, a parallel, unrespectable social system. The
most prominent of these groups were performers. Cohabitees in the
theatre continued to work freely despite the implications of their living
arrangements, since both men and women performers had enough social
and economic support to flout convention.
Again, though, the degree of choice in cohabitation differed between
the genders, since women preferred marriage. Dora Jordan, at the end of
the eighteenth century, lived for four years with Richard Ford (1786–90).
Both were actors and continued to work, and they had four children. Most
of Jordan’s biographers agree that she would have preferred to marry, but
Ford postponed matrimony because of his father’s disapproval. When
Jordan final y gave him an ultimatum, he refused outright.61 Though the
Regency stage was notoriously lax, the acting profession continued to see
irregular relationships throughout the nineteenth century. Ellen Terry lived
with Edward Godwin from 1868 to 1875. Since she was already married to
Frederick Watts, they could not regul
arise the relationship, though Terry
could have asked Watts to divorce her. Godwin and Terry apparently made
no effort to marry, perhaps because Godwin real y wanted a housekeeper as
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
a wife. He later married Beatrice Philip, a young student. In contrast, Terry
later married Charles Wardel , another actor.62 Terry was independent and
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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
successful, like West and Hunt, and she thus shared their difficulties in
building a lasting relationship with any man who wanted a domestic mate.
On the other hand, because of her salary, she was not ‘ruined’ by the end
of her free union.
At the lower end of the performing scale, the likelihood of cohabitation
was greater. These couples had the same lax attitude as sailors or tramps,
in part because actors were also highly mobile. William Compton, a
comic singer, was charged with abducting Mary Ann Malbon in 1885 in
Nottingham. They met at the music hal , and when his engagement ended,
she offered to go with him. They lived as a married couple until her family
tracked them down. The problem for women was that those who were
most likely to cohabit were also the poorest, causing economic distress if
the relationship failed. Louisa T., who performed at the Queen’s Theatre in
London, lived with Charles B., another performer. When he deserted her
in 1853, she appealed to the Foundling Hospital to take the younger of her
two children, without success.63
The family experience of such couples was similar to that of the
middle-class professionals who could not marry. Families, especial y those
of the women, opposed such arrangements, and were only reconciled by
subsequent marriages. Terry’s children, for example, did not meet their
extended family until she married legal y for the second time (after Watts
divorced her). Nevertheless, stage life had its peculiarities. First, the theatre