Living in Sin
Page 31
before the trial. As long as she remained attractive, she had little reason to
change her profession.
In fact, some kept women used their sexuality aggressively, demanding
compensation from their partners. Mary Ann Clarke, mistress of the Duke
of York, used the threat of her memoirs to negotiate a lump payment of
£7,000 and a £400 annuity when the relationship was over. Wilson also
extracted money from various lovers when she wrote her memoirs; many
paid to be removed from its pages.10 Few women got money on this
scale, but many used their sexuality to good effect. Emmeline Hairs, an
‘adventuress’, was the mistress of Sir George Elliot, an MP, in 1887. He gave
her large sums of money, including £3,000, supposedly an investment in
her nonexistent coal business.11
In contrast to these predatory cases, most of these relationships
involved emotional attachments. Irvine had numerous affectionate letters
from Vickers, who called her ‘the only woman I ever loved’. Handley claimed
to have struggled greatly when he decided he had to part from Keenan.12 For
the most part, the affection was mutual. Indeed, some of these unions were
extraordinarily long-lived. In contrast to Clarke, Madame de St Laurent
happily cohabited with the Duke of Kent for twenty-seven years. Though
he had to leave her to marry legal y in 1817, they both found the parting
painful. Even more remarkably, Elizabeth Armistead began her career in a
high-class brothel and had numerous protectors, but she eventual y settled
down with Charles James Fox. The couple loved each other so devotedly
that they married in 1795.13
Not all women relied solely on their incomes as mistresses. Some
professions gave women the opportunity to supplement their earnings
with protection from wealthy admirers. The main avenue to such a career
was the theatre. Upper-class men often became enamoured with the
glamourous figures on the stage; actresses may have preferred marriage,
but they knew that it was unlikely and so accepted protection. Dora Jordan,
the most prominent example, knew the Duke of Clarence would not marry
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
her, since he would never get George III’s permission. Thus, before they
cohabited, Dora negotiated an annual allowance of £840. Like many of the
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living in sin
actresses who had protectors, Jordan continued to go on stage; her lover’s
allowance simply added a much higher degree of financial security for her
and their ten children.14 Though rarely as exalted as royalty, most protectors
of actresses were noblemen or wealthy entrepreneurs who could offer high
incomes. May Gore acted in the 1890s and lived with Lord Sudley for two
years. When his family induced him to leave her, he settled £500 on her.
May then lived with another gentleman, a Mr Stourton, at which point
Sudley tried to get her back. She eventual y agreed, allegedly because he
promised marriage. When he broke off with her again, he offered her an
annual allowance of £100 which she indignantly refused.15
Clearly, women approached these unions on the understanding that
they deserved compensation when the affairs ended. Those who came out
best had written annuities; these gave real security. For the most part, this
belief was mutual. When the Duke of Clarence decided that he should find
a legal wife, he negotiated a settlement for Jordan, an allowance of £4,400,
though in return she gave up custody of the children when they reached
thirteen. Similarly, St Laurent received a generous allowance when she
retired back to France. In the case of Gore, Sudley testified that he gave
her the £500 because ‘I recognised that I had an obligation towards her’.16
Compensation was crucial because marriage was superior. When Gore
told Stourton that she was returning to Sudley because he offered marriage,
Stourton assured her he would not ‘stand in the way of her becoming a good
woman’. This did not mean the couples had no affection for each other,
but they recognised that without marriage, women had no security. Ann
Moody, mistress of an army officer, was afraid to tell him about her debts,
though she had accrued them after her confinement with his child. As the
editors of the Sunday Times pointed out, ‘a mistress must be incessantly
tormented by the knowledge that she can hold on to her lord not a moment
longer than his own confidence and sympathy endure.’17
Marriage also gave status; in contrast, prostitutes, kept women,
and cohabitees shaded into one another. The Victorian courts and press
largely saw all such women as ‘prostitutes’, and the women themselves
were often confused about the issue.18 One crucial indication was where
the male partner actual y lived or how often he visited. A married man,
unless formal y separated, had a house with his ‘real’ family, and his union
with a working-class woman was simply an affair. Some bachelors, too, had
family homes, and would not regard their habitation with a mistress as
their main residence (or might ask the mistress to leave when his ‘real’
family visited). On the other hand, men in billets or on ships much of the
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
year or in cramped accommodations in colleges or inns of court might
well have considered their mistresses’ houses as real ‘homes’; indeed, some
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Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
cross-class cohabitation
unhappily married men may also have done so. Moreover, the situation was
fluid. Within a single relationship, a couple might go from being a prostitute
and a ‘regular’, a kept woman with a protector who visited, then a live-in
mistress. Each change altered a man’s perception of his responsibilities. In
particular, men felt more obligation to pension off women with whom they
had marriage-like unions, though women who relied on goodwil , rather
than written agreements, risked disappointment.
Though the determination of these women to extract support partial y
mitigated their class and gender disadvantages, the financial arrangements
did not always pan out. Mistresses had more difficulty as they aged, since
their primary asset was their attractiveness. Their paramours might grow
tired of them, and they had less chance of finding anyone else as the years
went on. Both Jordan and St Laurent died alone in Paris, and Jordan
was heavily in debt. Mistresses had prosperity in the short run, but little
security; thus, they had
to be both romantic and businesslike, an uneasy
combination. Nevertheless, these unions were not purely exploitative by
one side or the other.
Esther Bartons
Though they did not always have happy ends, courtesans had some say
about the terms of their relationships. The second, much larger group of
mistresses were those who agreed to live with higher-class men because
of romantic feelings, by far the most common pattern for cross-class
relationships. Such women went into the unions knowing that they would
probably not marry, but they settled for what they could get. Some convinced
themselves that they would wed eventual y, especial y if they had children.
Women fell in love with well-off men easily, and these men’s regard was
also flattering. The secrecy and forbidden nature of the relationship added
to its al ure.19
An upper-class or middle-class man’s attraction to a poor woman may
have been due to her supposed earthiness, but could also have been her
ability to cater to his every need. Such women were also open and friendly,
as well as being ‘forbidden fruit’.20 Furthermore, men’s attraction to these
women was partly due to proximity. Men had wide social contacts, walked
the streets freely, dealt with working-class employees, and frequented music
hal s and other lower-class forms of entertainment. Many upper-class and
middle-class men delayed marriage for years or were in professions (such
as the army or navy) that meant long periods away from home. These men
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
were those most likely to have long-term relationships outside of marriage
with women in lower classes.
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living in sin
The women who agreed to these liaisons came from varying
backgrounds. One prominent group was domestic servants. As Chapter 4
demonstrated, some of the bigamy cases involved women who had married
into better-off families only to have their new in-laws sue in order to be rid
of them. Many of the nullity of marriage suits, too, involved a young, well-
off man, going through a secret ceremony with a servant.21 Other women
relied on promises of marriage. Maria Bessela, a German immigrant,
worked in a Liverpool hotel as a servant. The son of her employer made
romantic overtures to her, she claimed under a promise of marriage. When
she became pregnant, they lived together in lodgings until after the birth of
their child. He then gave her £60 to return to Germany, though she stayed
there only four months. Stern believed he had discharged his obligation,
but Bessela did not agree. On her return to England, she sued him for
breach of promise and got £100 from the jury.22
For the most part, though, men did not intend marriage, and women
recognised it was unlikely. A wealthy man seldom wanted to marry a
servant; even if he did, his family would object. Thus, the only solution was
to cohabit, often with modest financial support for the woman. Agness C.,
a servant, appealed to the Foundling Hospital in 1842, claiming that the
father of her child was a painter. The investigators, however, found that she
‘has two illegitimate children by the same man – said to be a Gentleman
– He allows her ten shillings a week’. Not surprisingly, the Hospital rejected
her petition. Catherine S., similarly, was a chambermaid in a large hotel,
where she met T., ‘a traveling Gentln of Fortune’. After his second visit, ‘he
proposed that she should become his Mistress and travel with him – she
consented’. T. frankly acknowledged that he wanted a mistress only, and
Catherine accepted the offer.23
Servants were tempting because they fulfilled all of the roles of wives,
usual y without pay once the cohabitation started. Louisa W. became a
servant to George L., a grocer, in 1845. In 1848, his wife died, and George
turned to Louisa for solace. As she put it, ‘We lived together as man &
wife for a year & a half – When pregnant I told him & he still promised
to protect me’. Again, George did not suggest marriage, but he did pledge
support. Unfortunately, he died less than a year later.24 Men might tire
of relationships with servants, but a limited responsibility continued.
Foundling Hospital records showed that many men saw the women
through their confinements, if not much beyond. In addition, a woman
was not always ruined by a relationship with an employer; she might get
a dowry. A. B. Brown lived with his servant, Mary, in 1833, and they had a
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
daughter. Brown paid her £60 a year, a bond that continued after his death.
Perhaps as a result, she married a Mr Jennings in 1835.25 In these cases, the
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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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cross-class cohabitation
upper-class men did not want to rear their children, but they did provide
for them, though on a modest level.
Servants with only slight class differences were particularly tempted
by the vision of marrying a well-off man, so risked cohabitation. Wilkie
Collins lived with his housekeeper, Caroline Graves, the widow of a
solicitor’s clerk. Though not rich, she was respectable, yet she lived as
Collins’s mistress/housekeeper in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Caroline
gained an improved lifestyle and a better future for her daughter, Harriet,
by doing so.26 All the same, better educated women would not stay in free
unions indefinitely. They had too much to lose, and most believed they
were suitable marriage material. Thus, some women sued for breach of
promise, and others abandoned the unions. Graves, for instance, married
another man after Collins’s mother died, almost certainly because Collins
refused to marry her. Though she later returned to work for him, their
relationship was never the same.27
What all these women had in common was their poor pay; servants,
even governesses, earned little. Other mistresses were also in poorly paid
jobs – millinery, needlework, and sweated labour. The amount these
women earned was so small and the hours so long that the life of a mistress
was attractive by comparison. Mary Ann M. was a needleworker when she
met Richard S., an army officer. At first, he paid for her sexual services; he
later provided her with lodgings. ‘He then said he would take her under his
protection – and she consented.’ Though in the end he did not make her
his mistress, her willingness to take this role was telling. Similarly, Eleanor
T., a seamstress, met Joshua G.,
an attorney, in London. ‘He offered to keep
her and for some time he supported her and visited her at her Lodgings’,
though his support stopped after she had a child.28 Only those women
who held out for promises of marriage had a chance to get compensation,
since juries often gave larger awards to cases which fitted the melodramatic
stereotype of the well-off seducer and the poor maiden. The plaintiff in
Berry v. Da Costa, in 1866, was a lacemaker, but she claimed that Da Costa,
‘a gentleman of considerable fortune’, promised marriage. Da Costa denied
it and called her a prostitute, but his defence failed and the jury awarded
her £2,500.29 Again, the civil courts tacitly acknowledged men’s need to
compensate women they had ‘ruined’. Berry’s story, though, was unusual;
most working women settled for protection with no promises.
Men in a variety of professions kept working-class women in the
nineteenth century, another demonstration of men’s sexual freedom. Other
cases in the Foundling Hospital records include that of a woman who
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
worked in a straw bonnet shop, who lived with an army colonel, and Ann
D., who lived with a diamond merchant in the 1840s. Barrett-Ducrocq’s
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Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.
living in sin
sample included a dressmaker who lived with a civil servant for a year
and a shop-girl with a medical student.30 In some cases, the men were not
able to support wives, while others wanted to establish themselves in their
professions before settling down. James Whistler, the painter, lived with
two of his models, Joanna Hifferman and Maud Franklin, in succession,
Jo for over six years and Maud for fifteen. Similarly, William Orpen, also
a painter, lived with his model on the continent while he made a name for
himself at the turn of the century.31
Natural y, these unions had real disadvantages for women, due to the
sexual double standard. For instance, when unable to achieve marriage,
women were often too ashamed to return home. They accepted ‘protection’