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  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  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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  in

  GENDER  HISTORY

  Series editors:

  Pam Sharpe, Lynn Abrams, Cordelia Beattie and Penny Summerfield

  j

  j

  The expansion of research into the history of women and gender since the

  1970s has changed the face of history. Using the insights of feminist theory

  and of historians of women, gender historians have explored the configuration

  in the past of gender identities and relations between the sexes. They have

  also investigated the history of sexuality and family relations, and analysed

  ideas and ideals of masculinity and femininity. Yet gender history has not

  abandoned the original, inspirational project of women’s history: to recover

  and reveal the lived experience of women in the past and the present.

    The series Gender in History provides a forum for these developments. Its

  historical coverage extends from the medieval to the modern periods, and its

  geographical scope encompasses not only Europe and North America but

  all corners of the globe. The series aims to investigate the social and cultural

  constructions of gender in  historical sources, as  well as  the gendering of

  historical discourse itself. It embraces both detailed case studies of specific

  regions  or  periods,  and  broader  treatments  of  major  themes.  Gender  in

  History titles are designed to meet the needs of both scholars and students

  working in this dynamic area of historical research.

  Living in sin

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  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 23:44:30.

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  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  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 23:44:30.

  LIVING IN SIN

  COHABITING AS HUSBAND AND WIFE

  IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

  Ginger S. Frost j

  j

  Manchester University Press

  Manchester and New York

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan

  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 23:44:30.

  Copyright © Ginger S. Frost 2008

  The right of Ginger S. Frost to be identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by Manchester University Press

  Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK

  and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA

  www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

  Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmil an

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York,

  NY 10010, USA

  Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press

  University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mal ,

  Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

  ISBN 978 0 7190 7736 4 hardback

  First published 2008

  17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Edited and typeset

  by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscal , Lancs

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  Printed in Great Britain

  by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

  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 23:44:30.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  page vii

  Introduction

  1

  1 Cohabitation, illegitimacy, and the law in England, 1750–1914

  9

  2 Violence and cohabitation in the courts

  32

  3 Affinity and consanguinity

  52

  4 Bigamy and cohabitation

&n
bsp; 72

  5 Adulterous cohabitation

  96

  6 The ‘other Victorians’: the demimonde and the very poor

  123

  7 Cross-class cohabitation

  148

  8 Radical couples, 1790–1850

  169

  9 Radical couples, 1850–1914

  195

  Conclusion

  225

  Bibliography

  236

  Index

  255

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  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 23:44:30.

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  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 23:44:30.

  Acknowledgements

  Having worked on this project for over a decade, I owe more debts than I can possibly

  repay. I want to thank the anonymous readers for Manchester University Press and

  the entire staff there. I am also deeply grateful to my wonderful mentors, Marty

  Wiener, Martha Vicinus, and John Gil is, who never hesitated to give support, advice,

  and letters when needed. I’m particularly indebted to the two readers of the original

  900-page manuscript, Gail Savage and George Robb, who helped plan the necessary

  cuts and who, for some reason, are stil friends with me. I also thank commentators at

  various meetings where I gave papers, too numerous to specify, and the readers of

  separate chapters, including Julie Early, Rod Phillips, and Nancy Fix Anderson. My

  colleagues at Samford University, especial y the chair, Dr John Mayfield, offered

  much support and encouragement. Similarly, I also want to thank the 2002–03

  fellows of the National Humanities Center, particularly the Victorianists: Harriet

  Ritvo, John Kucich, Diane Sadoff, Mol y Rothenberg, and Jonathan Riley. Joshua

  Bearden put together the Bibliography, and for that I am grateful. Final y, for intel ectual

  and practical support while in England, I thank John and Sue Stewart.

  I also owe much to the librarians at many institutions, including the British

  Library; National Archives (Kew); University College, London; Bishopsgate

  Institutional Reference Library, London Metropolitan Archives; British Library of

  Political and Economic Science; Institute of Advanced Legal Studies; the Institute

  of Historical Research; University of Michigan Library; Duke University and Law

  Libraries; Lambeth Palace Archives; National Research Library, Chicago; Centre for

  Northwest Regional Studies, Lancaster University; Bodleian Library; the Women’s

  Library, London Metropolitan University; and, especial y, the National Humanities

  Center, Triangle Park, NC. Anyone who has spent a year at the NHC knows how

  helpful and supportive the staff is, and my year was certainly no exception. I also

  received crucial monetary support from Judson College, Samford University; the

  National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Rockefeller Foundation, which

  funded my sabbatical year at the NHC.

  The following works have been previously published and are part of this

  manuscript, and I thank the publishers for permission to include any copyrighted

  materials here. These include the following: ‘ Through the medium of the passions

  : cohabitation contracts in England, 1750–1850’, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual

  Consortium on Revolutionary Europe (1994), 181–9; ‘Bigamy and cohabitation in

  Victorian England’, Journal of Family History 22 (1997), 286–306; ‘ He could not hold

  his passion : domestic violence and cohabitation in England, 1850–1900’, Crime,

  History & Societies, 12 (2008), 25–44; and ‘ Love is always free : Anarchism, free

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  unions, and Utopianism in Edwardian England’, Anarchist Studies, forthcoming.

  Final y, thanks to my support system of friends and family, especial y my

  mother. I could not have gotten through this long process without you.

  vii

  j

  j

  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 23:44:30.

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  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 23:44:30.

  Introduction

  In July 1875, George Henry Lewes, a man of letters and a scientist,

  accepted an invitation to a garden party which the Queen of Hol and

  attended. During the course of the afternoon, Lewes had a conversation

  with the monarch. She complimented his writings, then added, ‘as to your

  wife’s – all the world admires them’.1 What is startling about this story was

  that Lewes’s legal wife, Agnes, had never written a book in her life. Instead,

  the queen referred to Lewes’s cohabitee, Marian Evans (George Eliot), with

  whom he had lived for seventeen years. Nor was the Dutch queen unique

  in her sympathy. Queen Victoria, a byword for prudery, nevertheless let

  Eliot know how much she enjoyed her books, and acquired the signatures

  of both Lewes and Eliot for her collection. Princess Louise, her daughter,

  attended a party with the couple in 1878 and talked privately with Eliot

  for some time.2 Though Eliot was exceptional, her experience – along

  with many others – indicates that the Victorian attitude to unmarried

  cohabitation was not one of blanket condemnation. Instead, it was complex

  and contingent on many factors.

  Although the large number of cohabiting couples in England dates

  only from the 1970s, free unions are at least as old as marriage itself. In the

  nineteenth century, the choice to cohabit rather than marry crossed classes

  and regions and revealed conflicting motives and desires between the

  genders. It also problematised the whole notion of ‘marriage’ and ‘family’,

  and the state’s role in these institutions. As Chapter 1 will make clear, the

  law of marriage in England changed several times over the course of the

  century, but was based primarily on the Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753.

  The state took over the definition of marriage and most of the adjudication

  of marriage cases at that point, and even more so after the Divorce Act

  of 1857. Though the law never recognised common-law marriage as a

  legal status, the English courts nevertheless dealt with such relationships

  repeatedly. The civil courts decided disputes over bonds and wil s, while the

  criminal side oversaw bigamy trials and ins
tances of violence. The Victorian

  courts’ reaction to these relationships combined official disapproval with

  pragmatic acceptance. Such complications were almost inevitable, since

  these relationships had all the roles of spouses but no legal sanction. In

  the end, the issue boiled down to the definition of marriage – as a status, a

  Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.

  sacrament, an institution, and/or a relationship.

  The legal difficulties posed by cohabitation are therefore examined

  j

  j

  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

  in the first two chapters of this study, but most of the book examines the

  cohabiting couples themselves, including their interaction with each other,

  their families, and wider society. Though cohabitees were a small minority

  of couples, their experiences highlight important issues in family history,

  because those on the margins of society offer a unique perspective on

  the ‘norm’. In particular, these couples threw into disarray the traditional

  definition of marriage. Most of them insisted that they were married in

  all important respects. They fulfilled spousal duties, shared the same last

  name, reared children, and had lifelong commitments. In short, they

  defined marriage as a relationship, an idea, or an act of wil . What, then,

  was the exact difference between cohabitees and spouses? Cohabitation’s

  differences from, as well as its similarities to, marriage is a major theme of

  this book.

  Second, this work stresses the consequences of irregular cohabitation.

  For example, cohabitees offer new ways to look at the roles of kin, neighbours,

  and wider society in domestic life. Though their reactions differed by

  class, not all families rejected cohabitees as ‘fallen’. Many otherwise strict

  moralists made exceptions, as in marriages with a deceased wife’s sister. In

  addition, these couples had several special difficulties which forced them