Living in Sin
Page 43
difficulties for these couples, however. Dawson was ousted from the
Personal Rights Association when his free union became public. In
addition, one neighbour, a man named Naylor, began a spate of petty
harassments. Nevertheless, Dawson insisted that Gladys had to deal with
far more ‘insults and innuendos’ than he, a statement Gladys affirmed.65 As
usual, landladies were a particular concern. Eliza Mil ard, who lived in a
free union with Dr Percy MacLoghlin in Southport in the 1890s, had many
troubles in this regard. The couple saw each other for ten years without
cohabiting, but Mil ard had to move frequently, because her landladies
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‘objected to a gentleman friend visiting the house and staying the night.’
As a result, they moved in together, but remained targets for social scorn;
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radical couples, 1850–1914
a boy pelted Eliza with mud in 1898, and Percy’s defence of her landed him
in an assault trial.66
Because of the demise of the League after only six years, the historian
is left to wonder how the Dunton, Dawson, and Best/Wastall unions
endured. Donisthorpe continued to publish critiques of marriage into the
Edwardian period, and Vickery and Drysdale, who were also affiliated with
the League, stayed together for life, but the others fade from view.67 The
purpose of the League was a strange mix of radicalism and conservatism.
In an effort to remove the influence of the state from their personal lives,
the members formed a group that registered their irregular marriages and
acknowledged their children, giving a different kind of public sanction.68
In addition, the League had a limited audience, since they only wanted to
register ‘acknowledged’ illegitimates. Donisthorpe flatly rejected children
who emerged from ‘ephemeral, coarse and brutal passion,’ calling them
‘the bastards of the people.’69 The slight appeal of their ideas is, thus,
understandable. Working-class couples who were dissatisfied with the
law were more likely to petition for divorce reform than join the League.
And if they wanted revolution, they had other alternatives at the end of the
century.
Anarchism
The anarchist movement in Britain began in the mid–1880s and was
renewed by waves of emigrés from Europe throughout the period before
the First World War. Many famous anarchists ended up in London for
at least some time, including Peter Kropotkin and Louise Michel. Thus,
anarchism, like Marxism, tended to have a number of immigrant members
and to be concentrated in the poorer areas of cities. It was a minority group
in England; most workers preferred socialism. All the same, several small
anarchist groups operated in England, often working in conjunction with
other radical organisations.70
Anarchism critiqued the power of the state as well as capitalism.
Anarchists wanted authority to rise from below, either in the form of
federated communes or in direct democracy. They also championed
individual liberty more than socialists. Thus, anarchists regarded marriage
as another example of state oppression.71 At base, they disapproved
of marriage for two reasons. First, they insisted that love could not be
coerced. A typical article asserted that ‘Love needs no legal chains’, and
some anarchists even eschewed monogamy. Second, Anarchists supported
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
women’s rights and argued that the ‘emancipation of woman from her
domestic slavery is to be found in the abolition of the marriage laws.’72
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living in sin
Anarchists also revived the Owenite interest in communal living,
and several small communities formed in the Edwardian period. The most
prominent was at Whiteway, in Gloucester, founded in 1898. Some couples
married legal y there, but others decided to form non-marital partnerships.
According to Nellie Shaw, who lived with Francis Sedlak for thirty-three
years, their objections to marriage were similar to those of all anarchists:
love should be free, marriage made women chattels, and divorce was
‘tedious and expensive’. Whiteway couples also disliked patriarchal control
of children within marriage. Because of these objections, Whiteway saw
seven free unions in the first group of settlers and four more in the second.
The couples united in a variety of ways, some with religious rites, wedding
rings, and a change of names, but others with none of these. In short,
individuals were free to do what suited them best.73
Some of the unions failed, with unfortunate results. One couple
broke up due to the desertion of the man, yet he came back and caused
a scene when his partner formed a second union. The ensuing publicity
caused a great deal of trouble.74 Yet others lasted for decades, including
Shaw’s. From this fact, she concluded that free unions ‘compare quite
favourably with legal marriage … But at the same time I cannot claim they
are much better.’ Some marriages were free and supportive, and some free
unions were full of ‘property sense’. Thus, the success or failure was ‘more a
matter of temperament than anything else.’75 As this conclusion shows, one
strength of the anarchist movement was its firm individualism, so that each
couple made its own decision, even in communal settings.
Outside of these small communities, some anarchist leaders also
participated in free unions. Guy Aldred, anarchist-communist, lived in a
free union with Rose Witkop between 1908 and 1921. Aldred was born in
London in 1886, the son of a naval officer and a parasol maker. His parents
never lived together, and both of them married bigamously later in their
lives, a circumstance that made Guy sceptical about marriage. In 1907, he
met Rose after he had converted to atheism and anarchism. Witkop was
a Polish Jew who had immigrated to Britain, following her older sister,
Millie. She was a feminist and supporter of workers’ rights. The couple fell
in love, and though their courtship was chaste for some time, both had
unconventional ideas about marriage.76
Aldred’s disdain for legal marriage was one of his firmest articles of
faith. His objections were in line with most anarchist positions. He insisted
that a promise to love forever was ‘void from the very start for neither party
knew if it would hold for life.’ Aldred also believed in women’s rights, calling
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press.
All rights reserved.
marriage ‘serfdom’ and ‘rape by contract’. He railed against the requirement
that women change their names at marriage; this proved married women’s
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radical couples, 1850–1914
‘function was to be a chattel.’77 As a communist, he also argued that an
overhaul of the economic system was necessary for women to be free.
All the same, he was against promiscuity. He believed that people were
becoming more monogamous, not less, and that celibacy would eventual y
predominate among the most ‘evolved’ part of humanity.78
Witkop left little writing of her own, though she agreed with Aldred
on many of these points. Only seventeen when she met Aldred, she was
already a poised and accomplished radical. She was a socialist-anarchist
first, and a feminist second. For example, she wrote a piece for the Voice
of Labour that argued that economic changes were more important than
women’s suffrage. Stil , she added that each woman ‘is a slave in every
sense of the word both in the factory and in her household.’ Like Aldred,
Witkop made a ‘distinction between the terms lust, licence, prostitution,
and free love’. She wanted relationships of ‘staunch friendship, unsullied
by obligations and duties, ties and certificates.’ She was also more assertive
than Guy, according to him. Aldred wanted a chaste union, but Rose
disagreed. She gave birth to their son in 1909, getting her way on this as
well as other matters.79
Aldred and Witkop had a difficult relationship. In his memoirs, Guy
reported that Rose had several affairs. Guy insisted that he was not jealous,
but the relationship did not survive her infidelities, though they did not
separate formal y until after the First World War. They also disagreed on
politics; for example, Guy objected to Rose’s preoccupation with birth
control reform. Beyond these differences, Aldred was conscious of the
difficulties of uniting two disparate people. Before he lived with Rose,
he wondered, ‘Would each partner to the union remain the person the
other mated?’ Later, Aldred argued that love was not enough to make a
relationship work; the couple must suit each other as wel .80
Witkop and Aldred also endured much family opposition to their
union. Guy’s mother was anti-Semitic and feared losing her son’s economic
support. Despite her own bigamous marriage, she also disapproved on
moral grounds, which exasperated Guy. Rose’s family was equal y hostile;
her mother was particularly distressed, since Rose was the third of the four
daughters in the family to reject wedlock. Mrs Witkop also disliked that
Aldred was not Jewish (a neat reversal of Guy’s mother’s reaction). Nor
did Pol y and Mil y, her two sisters, much like Guy, though they eventual y
came around. Only Aldred’s grandfather was supportive: ‘he did not think
ceremony or state registration mattered if we each had the courage to stand
firm.’81 The couple also experienced social difficulties. One night when
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
they were out, a policeman called Rose a prostitute. Aldred threatened to
lodge a complaint so the constable apologised, but Rose was ‘much upset.’
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living in sin
Moreover, when Rose went into the hospital to give birth to their son, the
hospital authorities would not let Guy see Rose ‘and treated her as “a fallen
woman”’.82
In addition to these practical problems, Aldred suffered from the
union’s failure; his memoir is extremely touchy about it. He repeats over and
over again that it was purer and braver than any others. A typical passage
called their union ‘one of principle and challenge’, which ‘placed our union
far above most of the eccentric matings that occurred in the Socialist and
Anarchist movement.’ Aldred even assumed that theirs was the first union
that was both open and voluntary. This showed not only Aldred’s ignorance
of other couples, but also his need to feel superior. Since the freedom of
their union had left him alone, he continued to defend the purity of their
principles as compensation for his loss. A final irony was that Rose and
Guy did marry in 1926, since the government threatened to deport her due
to her radical activities, and Guy wanted to protect the mother of his son.
They married, then, after their personal relationship was long over. Despite
Guy’s protestations, marriage did have its compensations.83
Aldred’s doubts about other free unions could be wrong-headed, but
he was not completely off-base. Pol y Witkop, Rose’s sister, lived with a
German refugee named Simmerling, because he had a wife in Germany.
Aldred criticised her for going by the name of ‘Mrs Simmerling’ and for
not standing up to her lazy partner. Although overly harsh, he did at least
see that a free union did not preclude traditional gender roles; in fact,
Pol y later had to marry for convenience because Simmerling deserted
her. Radical men, then, were not necessarily feminists and might be total y
unscrupulous. A Russian anarchist named Tchishikoff lived with a young
woman named Zlatke in the East End, but left her pregnant and alone when
his legal wife arrived from Russia.84 In other words, male libertinism was
present in anarchist circles, especial y since for some of them, ‘free love’
was an article of faith.
In addition, the middle-class members of the anarchist movement
usual y married legal y, as did much of the leadership. The middle classes
had more to lose, and middle-class women, in particular, hesitated to risk
their reputations. One exception was Olivia Rosetti, daughter of William
(Gabriel’s brother) and Lucy Rosetti. Olivia and her younger siblings, Arthur
and Helen, edited an anarchist journal, the Torch, from 1891 to 1895. Olivia
fell in love with Antonio Agresti, an Italian engraver and anarchist, who
had fled Florence in 1885. Early in 1896, the two ‘united’ their lives when
Agresti returned to Italy. All the same, the two married in Florence in 1897,
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
so their rebellion was short-lived; it also coincided with the withdrawal of
all the Rosettis from the movement.85
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radical couples, 1850–1914
On the other hand, at least one free union in the anarchist movement
was both happy and long-lived. Rudolf Rocker and Mil y Witkop’s
relationship spanned almost sixty years. Mil y had been the first of her
family to come to London from Polish Russia in 1894, when she was only
fifteen. She worked hard to bring over her entire family in 1897, and she
had, by that time, begun working with the East End Jewish radicals. Rocker
was a German who emigrated to France and then England. His family was
Social Democratic, and he became involved with Jewish anarchists in Paris.
He lived with a woman in Germany and then France, and they had a son
in 1893, but they did not remain together, since they had no ‘spiritual bond
between’ them. Rocker came to England in 1895, and he devoted himself
to the Jewish East End, where he met Witkop. The two quickly became a
couple.86
Rocker and Witkop’s views of marriage came out most clearly when
they tried to emigrate to the United States in 1898. When they arrived in
New York, the officials asked for their marriage certificate, and Rudolf
admitted that they had none, explaining, ‘Our bond is one of free agreement
between my wife and myself.’ The woman official then asked Millie how she
could agree with such a notion, since it promoted ‘free love’. Millie replied
that she would not ‘consider it dignified as a woman and a human being to
want to keep a husband who doesn’t want me’. She added, ‘Love is always
free … When love ceases to be free, it is prostitution.’ Unsurprisingly, this
ended the conversation. Eventual y, the authorities told the couple that
they must marry or leave. Rocker and Witkop returned to England rather
than submit, a stand that gave them brief notoriety in England and the
United States.87
Rocker and Witkop had a firm partnership during the next several
years. Millie committed her savings to helping launch his newspaper, the
Arbeter Fraint, and also set the type for his publications. They had one son,
Fermin, and also took in Rudolf’s son from his previous union. When
Rocker was interned in the First World War, Millie stuck by him until she
herself was arrested in 1916. When the government offered to send her to