History Workshop Journal 23 (1987), 102–3; 106–8.
48 Collete, ‘Socialism and scandal’, 109–10, quote from 109.
49 H. G. Wel s, Socialism and the Family (London: A. C. Fifield, 1906), pp. 29–40; 44–60;
Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, pp. 111–15; J. Lewis, ‘Intimate relations between men and
women: The Case of H. G. Wel s and Amber Pember Reeves’, History Workshop Journal
37 (1994), 76–83; Wel s, Experiment in Autobiography, pp. 394–409.
50 Lewis, ‘Intimate relations between men and women’, 84–6; J. Briggs, A Woman of Passion:
The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858–1924 (London: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 306.
51 Hammond, H. G. Wel s and Rebecca West, both quotes from p. 75; E. M. Watson, ‘Wel sian
prototypes of freewomen’, Freewoman 1 (1912), 397–8.
52 Lewis, ‘Intimate relations between men and women’, 94.
53 E. Lanchester, Elsa Lanchester Herself (London: Michael Joseph, 1983), pp. 1–3;
Rubenstein, Before the Suffragettes, pp. 58–9; O. Dawson, The Bar Sinister and Licit Love:
the First Biennial Proceedings of the Legitimation League (London: W. Reeves and George
Cornwel , 1895), pp. 282–3; O. Dawson, ‘Lanchester and liberty’, The Labour Annual for
1896 (London: Clarion Company, 1896), 59–60, quote from 60.
54 Rubenstein, Before the Suffragettes, pp. 59–63; Lanchester, Elsa Lanchester Herself, pp. 3–5;
10; Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, pp. 94–104.
55 Lanchester, Elsa Lanchester Herself, pp. 32–40; 59–60, quote from p. 59.
56 Ibid. , p. 316.
57 Ibid. , p. 14.
58 Martin, Working Women and Divorce, p. 3; Rose, Intel ectual Life of the British Working
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Class, pp. 206–20.
59 Rubenstein, Before the Suffragettes, pp. 45–7 (quote from p. 45); Benn, Predicaments of
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radical couples, 1850–1914
Love, pp. 154–9; Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality, pp. 141–52; Hunt, Equivocal
Feminists, pp. 106–9; F. Richards (ed.), At Scotland Yard: Being the Experiences during
Twenty-Seven Years’ Service of John Sweeney (London: Grant Richards, 1904), pp. 176–91;
J. Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchists (London: Paladin,
1978), pp. 214–16; A. Goldwyn, ‘The Legitimation League’, Free Review 8 (1897), 295–8.
60 G. Bedborough, ‘The Legitimation League’, Shafts (1897), 125; W. Donisthorpe, The
Outcome of Legitimation (London: Legitimation League, 1897), p. 14; Dawson, The Bar
Sinister and Licit Love, p. 284; Adult 1 (1897–98), 138, 147 (for quote).
61 W. Donisthorpe, ‘The future of marriage’, Fortnightly Review 59 (1892), 258–71; The
Outcome of Legitimation, pp. 8–9.
62 M. Reed, ‘A question of children: A symposium’, Adult 2 (1898), 204.
63 Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, Legitimation League, The Rights of Natural
Children: Verbatim Report of the Inaugural Proceedings of the Legitimation League
(London: W. Reeves, 1893), pp. 54–5; 69; Dawson, The Bar Sinister and Licit Love, p. 50.
64 O. Dawson, Personal Rights and Sexual Wrongs (London: William Reeves, 1897), pp. 9–28;
Legitimation League, The Rights of Natural Children, p. 10; Dawson, The Bar Sinister and
Licit Love, p. 9; Adult 1 (1898), 147–8; 1 (1897), back covers of issues 4 and 5 (for quote).
65 Donisthorpe, The Outcome of Legitimation, p. 6; Dawson, The Bar Sinister and Licit Love,
pp. 190–9; 225, quote from p. 199.
66 ‘The Mil ard and Thompson cases’, Adult 2 (1898), 84–7, quote from 85.
67 Adult 1 (January 1898), 139; Legitimation League, The Rights of Natural Children, pp. 17–
18; W. Donisthrope, ‘To the editors of The Freewoman’, Freewoman 1 (1912), 171; ‘Problem
plays and novels’, Freewoman 2 (1912), 66–7.
68 O. Dawson, ‘Labour and legitimation’, The Labour Annual for 1895 (Manchester: The
Labour Press Society, 1896), 91.
69 W. Donisthorpe, ‘Bastardy’, Free Review 1 (1893–94), 330–42, quote from 342.
70 H. Oliver, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London (London:
Croom Helm, 1983); Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse, pp. 19–21, 47–61; G. Cores, Personal
Recol ections of the Anarchist Past (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 1992).
71 P. Shipley, Revolutionaries in Modern Britain (London: The Bodley Head, 1976), pp. 172–6;
W. C. H., Confessions of an Anarchist (London: Grant Richards, 1911), pp. 89–98; 127;
133; G. Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! The Autobiography of Guy A. Aldred 2 vols (Glasgow:
Strickland Press, 1957), II, 318.
72 Verax, ‘The logic of free-love’, Anarchist 1, #7 (1886), 4–5, first quote from 5; W. C. H.,
Confessions, p. 133 (for second quote); H. Seymour, ‘The anarchy of love’, Anarchist 2, #5
(1888), 3, 6; ‘The anarchy of love’, Anarchist 2, #6 (1888), 3, 6–7.
73 N. Shaw, Whiteway: A Colony in the Cotswolds (London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1935),
128–30, quote from 128; J. Thacker, Whiteway Colony: The Social History of a Tolstoyan
Community (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993), pp. 9–14.
74 Thacker, Whiteway, pp. 17–19.
75 Shaw, Whiteway, p. 131.
76 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 309–20; J. T. Caldwel , Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and
Times of Guy Aldred, Glasgow Anarchist (Barr, Ayrshire: Luath Press, Ltd, 1988), pp. 9–24;
55–7; G. Aldred, From Anglican Boy Preacher, p. 46; Quail, A Slow Burning Fuse, pp. 241–
2; 248–9; 280–3.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
77 G. Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 322–8; 353; 372, first quote from 372, fourth from 353;
‘Labour and Malthusian heresy’, Voice of Labour 1 (1907), 138; ‘Socialism, women, and
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living in sin
the suffrage’, Voice of Labour 1 (1907), 146 (for second quote), 150 (for third), 154; The
Religion and Economics of Sex Oppression (London: Bakunin Press, 1907), pp. 26–32; From
Anglican Boy Preacher, pp. 46–52.
78 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 322–4; ‘Questions of sex-oppression’, Freewoman 2 (1912),
179; From Anglican Boy Preacher, p. 52; Religion and Economics of Sex Oppression, pp.
36–40.
79 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 313–16; 399; 403; R. Witkop, ‘Votes for women’, Voice of
Labour 1 (1907), 51 (first quote); R. Witkop, ‘A retort’, The Freewoman 1 (1912), 273 (rest of
quotes).
80 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 403–6; 423–31; 327 (for quote); I:443; Caldwel , Come
Dungeons Dark, pp. 201–7.
81 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 320–3; 327; 372–4; 399; 424, quote from p. 327.
82 Ibid. , II, 328, 399; 403, quotes from pp. 328; 399; Caldwel , Come D
ungeons Dark, pp. 84–5;
102–3.
83 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , I, 444; II, 385; 400, quote from p. 385; Caldwel , Come Dungeons
Dark, pp. 221–34.
84 Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , II, 320; R. Rocker, The London Years (London: Robert
Anscombe & Co., 1956), pp. 190–1; W. J. Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals, 1875–1914
(London: Duckworth & Company, 1975), p. 270.
85 Oliver, The International Anarchist Movement, pp. 33–8; 120–5; 159–60; W. Rosetti, Some
Recol ections of Wil iam Michael Rosetti 2 vols (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906),
II, 446–57.
86 Rocker, London Years, pp. 98–101, quote from p. 98; Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals,
pp. 229–37; M. Grauer, An Anarchist ‘Rabbi’: The Life and Teachings of Rudolf Rocker (New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 42–3; 74–7.
87 Rocker, London Years, pp. 101–5, quotes on pp. 102–3; Grauer, An Anarchist ‘Rabbi’, pp.
77–8.
88 Rocker, London Years, pp. 249–359; Grauer, An Anarchist ‘Rabbi’, pp. 92–3; 127–39; 175–6;
208–12; Oliver, International Anarchist Movement, pp. 141–3.
89 Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals, p. 268; R. Rocker, Mil y Witkop Rocker (Orkney:
Ciefuegos Press, 1956), pp. 9, 19 (for quote); Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait! , p. 399.
90 Oliver, International Anarchist Movement, p. 153; Shaw, Whiteway.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
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Conclusion
Cohabitees were the exceptions, not the rule, in nineteenth-century
England. As such, one could dismiss them as unimportant in the
broader scheme of family history. Yet these couples confronted the
question of what makes a marriage in ways that made state and religious
authorities distinctly uncomfortable. Cohabitees could do this because
cohabitation was both similar and different from marriage, depending on
circumstances. For those who wanted to be married, it was a second choice,
but one which pointed up the inequities of English law. For those who
chose not to marry, cohabitation was a positive state in itself, particularly
for marital radicals. In either case, it interrogated marriage as a sacrament,
legal state, and relationship.
In many ways, cohabitees resembled married couples and emulated
aspects of marriage as much as possible. First, the intense desire for a
public ritual was clear. Women wanted a ceremony, in part to satisfy their
consciences and in part to please their ‘friends’, but many men also saw it
as important. Thus, working-class couples ‘jumped the broom’, exchanged
rings at others’ weddings, or went out of the parish to marry illegal y.
Middle-class couples married abroad or announced their decision to
cohabit through formal letters. Though not legal or sanctified by religion,
these events nevertheless bound the couple together publicly and often
included symbols like marriage lines, wife-sale ‘papers’, and rings. Second,
most cohabitees expected a lifetime commitment and monogamy (at least
for women); this was true even in the ‘criminal’ classes. Except for a few
rare middle-class couples and radicals, cohabitees reared families and lived
among their neighbours as before. The emotional investment of the partners
was often intense and binding; many remained committed to unions that
were clearly dysfunctional without any legal obligation to do so. Indeed,
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
ending these unions was fraught with difficulties in all classes, as violence
cases make clear. Third, many neighbours tolerated cohabitees (except
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living in sin
those seen as ‘homewreckers’) especial y because of the class and gender
inequalities of the marriage laws. And even in censorious neighbourhoods,
unless something went badly wrong, these couples ‘passed’ as married
precisely because they resembled the married so closely.
All of these similarities were important, but the biggest ones related
to gender. Both male and female cohabitees, even those in radical circles,
expected men and women’s ‘spousal’ roles to stay the same. Women did the
domestic labour and kept the house, and men were breadwinners and the
ultimate authorities. Occasional y, professional women also worked, but
they still had responsibility for the home and any children or stepchildren.
In general, as wel , women regarded these commitments as more binding
than men did, since the sexual double standard was, if anything, heightened
by the economic and social vulnerabilities of ‘fallen’ women. Women
tended to see irregular unions as ‘marriages’ whatever their legal status,
while some men could see themselves as ‘free’ even in legal marriages.
These similarities to marriage, though, differed by class. The
middle classes could escape some of the legal and social consequences of
nonconformity, since they could marry and live abroad, and the men could
support more than one family more easily. Better-off couples also had
more resources to help change the laws in their favour, through pressure
groups and petitioning. Working-class couples had no such options and so
tended to get into trouble with the law more often. Yet the working class
had more advantages social y, due to the more flexible sexual norms of the
lower classes. No ostracism was total, but middle-class women suffered the
most from societal and familial disapproval. A woman with a bad sexual
reputation had a lesser status in all classes, but this was a much more
serious loss the higher one moved up the scale. A woman lost her social
standing, her job (if any), or even her children if her personal life became
known. Middle-class men had fewer restraints, but they did not escape all
censure; a middle-class man’s sexual reputation mattered to his professional
prospects, and the courts were especial y hard on educated men who ‘fel ’
or who did not keep their promises.
Thus, stable cohabitation and marriage shared many traits and
sometimes reinforced class and gender norms. All the same, cohabitees
could not emulate all aspects of marriage; even those most firmly
emotional y ‘married’ could not change the legal and social circumstances.
Most important, cohabitation had little legal standing, and any children
of such unions were illegitimate even if the parents later married. As a
result, all legal documents required extremely careful handling. Otherwise,
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
&nbs
p; unmarried ‘widows’ risked losing legacies from their cohabitees and any
hope of charitable support, and their children might lose inheritances to
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conclusion
legitimate rivals. Even more seriously, working-class women cohabitees
faced difficult problems in the event of desertion or death of their partners.
The downward spiral of female cohabitees showed the difference in status
between a wife and a ‘mistress’ most clearly; a woman could go from a pseudo-
wife to a prostitute in an alarmingly short time. Though less marked, men
also faced some disadvantages in cohabitation. The criminal law at times
punished cohabiting men more harshly than husbands, assuming that male
cohabitees ‘chose’ to live unrespectably. And cohabitees’ conflicts, unlike
those of spouses, sometimes related to women’s independence as much as
men’s; women cohabitees, unlike wives, controlled their own property, had
custody over any children, and (in theory) could leave men who would not
commit to them. In short, men gained freedom from cohabitation, but in
doing so they forfeited some of their legal authority.
Couples could also not emulate the social acceptance of marriage.
Neighbours and family might tolerate the relationships, but rarely as the
best possibility. Some working-class parents and siblings never stopped
trying to get the couple to the altar or to break them up, and middle-class
couples who did not remain discreet faced snubs and isolation. Vicars and
church missionaries also applied pressure to enforce marriage, whatever
the attitudes of the couples themselves. In general, those who could not
marry got more ready sympathy than those who did or would not marry,
because their situation was not of their own making. But this kind of
sympathy assumes ‘fault’ existed, even if it did not rest with the couples,
and that the situation was not ideal. Because of these legal and social issues,
cohabitation was never quite the same as marriage, despite a number of
Living in Sin Page 45