Living in Sin Read online

  to call on the help of their families and friends, particularly in the working

  classes. In the majority of cases, the families answered the cal . The wider

  society also had a nuanced approach to marital nonconformity, and this

  grew as the century went on. In short, the amount of ostracism depended

  on many factors, including class, gender, generation, and most crucial y,

  the reason for cohabitation.

  The consequences also came out in the legal system. The role of the

  state in defining marriage, but also partly supporting cohabitation, is a third

  major issue in the book. Criminal and civil assize courts, police courts, and

  church courts had great difficulty in adjudicating a status that did not, in

  fact, exist in law. Over time, the actions of thousands of couples, and their

  public redefinition of marriage, helped to change social and legal norms.

  By the end of the century, voices from all classes protested the strictness

  of the divorce law, and a combination of working-class and middle-class

  actions had lifted the ban on one type of affinal marriage (to a deceased

  wife’s sister) in 1907. Critics revealed inequities in marriage and demanded

  changes to the laws of divorce and illegitimacy. Though reforms only came

  after the First World War, the social basis for them was already in place

  beforehand, showing the importance of pressure ‘from below’ in revising

  marriage laws.

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

  In order to explore these three themes, I have located as many

  examples of cohabiting couples as possible, collecting approximately one

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  Frost, Ginger S.. Living in Sin : Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England,

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  introduction

  thousand. These couples divide into three major groups. The first and

  largest group were those, like Eliot and Lewes, who lived together because

  they could not marry. Such couples include people who were too closely

  related by blood or marriage as well as those who already had spouses and

  could not divorce. Couples in this section wanted to marry and blamed the

  law, not themselves, for their irregular status. The challenge these couples

  posed was to the legal definition of marriage, making them especial y

  troubling to the state, but allowing family and neighbours to sympathise

  with their plights more readily.

  The second group were those who did not marry, either from

  indifference, lack of social pressure, or class concerns. This section includes

  the very poor, those in ‘criminal’ pursuits, and the parallel world of the

  demimonde. Some professions required flexible domestic arrangements,

  but in all occupations of the poorest classes, stable cohabitation offered

  a rational alternative to legal marriage. Since these couples chose not to

  marry, they challenged marriage more directly, though they did not often

  dissent from its expectations, especial y in gender roles. The second group

  in this section were cross-class couples. These pairs were almost always

  a well-off man with a poorer woman, putting both class and gender

  differences in stark relief. The relations to the state in all of these instances

  were, again, complex. The demands that men keep promises and support

  dependants could sometimes mitigate the disadvantages of poorer women

  and their children.

  The third group were those who would not marry, as a conscious

  protest against the institution. Though this group was the smallest, it had

  cultural impact out of proportion with its numbers, due to the public

  nature of its marital dissent. This section, unlike the previous two, is

  organised chronological y, showing both the continuities and the changes

  in challenges to marriage. I have called these couples ‘radicals’, though I

  am aware that this term is problematic, since it indicates a specific political

  approach in the nineteenth century, and also because some of the couples

  wanted only reform of marriage rather than abolition. I use the term simply

  for convenience; it indicates those who had conscious reasons to disdain

  marriage and then acted on those beliefs. Readers should remember this

  definition when perusing these chapters.

  Within each of these groups, I highlight class and gender differences.

  In general, the working class had a more tolerant attitude than the middle

  class, especial y in urban areas. On the other hand, the sexual double

  standard meant that men faced less ostracism than women in all classes.

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

  Men’s gender advantage recurred in every type of cohabitation; the male

  partner was reluctant to marry far more often than the female one. In

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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.

  Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.

  living in sin

  addition, women fulfilled wifely roles and made long-term commitments

  more readily, whatever the legal status of the union. Stil , the issue was

  not simple. Precisely because of men’s roles as providers and protectors,

  the courts expected them to keep their words and enforced demands for

  support from women and children. As a result, men paid a legal price for

  cohabitation, though the social and economic costs were greater for women.

  Though most of the chapters centre on socio-legal history, I also

  demonstrate the difference between the cultural and social significance of

  figures such as Mary Wol stonecraft and George Eliot. These public ‘fallen’

  women acted as touchstones for conservatives and reformers alike, but their

  family experiences were much like other cohabitees. This was also true for

  many of the ‘pioneers’ historians have studied, including painters, novelists,

  and socialists like Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling. When put against

  the backdrop of hundreds of similarly circumstanced couples, the way that

  these pairs both resembled and differed from their peers becomes clear,

  and the similarities outweighed the differences. Moreover, circumstances,

  not choice, usual y forced these couples into irregular unions.

  Whatever the context, most couples, including those who chose

  not to marry, showed a desire for a ritual and a life-long commitment. As

  this work will make clear, those who lived in free unions usual y wanted a

  permanent, stable union, not promiscuity. Thus, cohabitees’ challenge was

  to the terms of the union, and to the role of the state, but not to the idea

  itself. In light of this, marriage’s survival into the twenty-first century is not

  a surprise. Ironical y, by dissenting from marriage, these couples helped to

  redefine it, but also equipped it to survive an age of mass cohabitation and

  no-fault divorce. This conclusion would ha
ve horrified some, and delighted

  others, of the couples in the following pages.

  Definitions and limitations

  I have limited this study in a number of ways. Due to limitations of space, I

  was unable to explore generational tensions between parents and children

  in any detail, though I hope to return to that subject in my next project.3

  I have also largely eliminated the aristocratic couples. Their social mores

  were distinct, and they made up only 2 per cent of the English population.

  A few nobles appear in the sections on the demimonde and cross-class

  cohabitation, but they are otherwise absent. I have also limited this study

  to those who resided in England and Wales. Scottish and Irish laws were

  different, and including those countries would have added many more pages

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

  to a book already too long. In addition, I have concentrated on couples

  who lived for substantial parts of their lives in England, rather than English

  j

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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.

  Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.

  introduction

  subjects abroad. Expatriates in Paris and Italy had communities with laxer

  social mores and offered an escape for those with irregular relationships,

  but because of those differences, they need a study all their own.

  Final y, I have limited myself to heterosexual cohabitees, for several

  reasons. First, other historians have written on gay history and done it

  very well; I do not need to replicate that work.4 Second, such a discussion

  would add to the length of the book by hundreds of pages. Third, and

  most important, same-sex couples were in a different legal position than

  opposite-sex couples. The latter at least had the possibility of marrying.

  Even if they were already married, they might outlive their spouses and

  then be able to marry their cohabitees. This was not the case for same-

  sex couples; the law did not allow civil partnerships for them until 2005.

  Thus, the dynamic with the state was distinct from opposite-sex cohabitees

  in a crucial way. Because of all of these reasons, this book will focus on

  heterosexual cohabitees.

  Except for Chapters 8 and 9, these chapters are organised holistical y.

  My time frame is the long nineteenth century, from the 1760s to the First

  World War, but, because of the limitations of sources, much of my evidence

  is from the 1830s to 1914. The continuities are greater than the changes in

  most of these groups, but I have tried to indicate change over time when

  important. Overal , the period between 1760 and 1840 had more open

  marital nonconformity, while mid-century had stricter propriety, at least

  in appearance. After 1880, the fin-de-siècle period saw renewed openness

  about sexuality and criticism of the ‘hypocrisy’ of mid-century. But all of

  these changes were tendencies rather than strict rules and differed by class

  and region. The working class always had a higher percentage of couples

  outside marriage than other groups, and the laws of marriage tightened

  in the course of the century, thus pushing more couples out of the marital

  fold. Rural areas also tended to have fewer such couples than urban areas,

  where they could be more anonymous.

  Natural y, the definition of ‘cohabitees’ is vexed. In general, I defined a

  couple as ‘cohabiting’ if they lived ‘as husband and wife’ for a month or more.

  This term was a common contemporary phrase and meant that the couple

  had sexual relations, but also that they presented themselves as married to

  society. At least one of the partners, then, believed that the relationship was

  committed. These unions might not be permanent, but they were exclusive

  for the time they lasted (at least for the women). Because the sources are

  often silent on sexual issues, some couples are included who may not

  have had sexual intercourse, but who lived together and had emotional

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

  intimacy. I also included couples if the bulk of their relationship occurred

  before 1914, even if it continued past the First World War. In addition, some

  j

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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.

  Created from nscc-ebooks on 2019-06-18 23:44:10.

  living in sin

  couples, unsurprisingly, do not fit neatly into one category or the other. For

  example, many of the couples who could not marry legal y also dissented

  from marriage for philosophical reasons. I have, then, included a handful

  of couples in more than one category.

  Sources

  Middle-class cohabitees have left numerous records, and some are famous –

  the writings on Eliot alone run to thousands of pages. The sections on these

  couples, then, are necessarily partly synthetic. I did not redo work already

  done well by other historians, though I did consult printed collections of

  letters, autobiographies, and diaries when available. I have supplemented

  these accounts by finding a number of more obscure cohabitees, drawn

  from legal records, diaries, Court of Arches records, Royal Commissions

  on Marriage in 1848 and 1912, and newspapers. The legal sources include

  disputes over bonds and wil s, bigamy and violence cases, and church court

  cases such as nullity, incest, and false declaration of marriage. Though only

  a minority of the latter dealt with cohabitation, they are valuable in giving

  insight into higher-class couples when other types of evidence are scarce.

  Middle-class couples also appear in government documents. The

  Royal Commission on Marriage in 1848 was primarily concerned with

  affinal and consanguineous marriages, illegal after 1835; the commissioners

  took hundreds of pages of evidence, including testimonies of those who

  had defied the law. The Royal Commission of Marriage and Divorce of 1912

  centred on divorce reform – the expansion of grounds, equalisation between

  the genders, and lessening the cost. This Commission’s report contained

  numerous statements and letters from those who lived in adulterous

  unions. Those giving evidence wanted to influence the government

  to change the law, but this does not mean that their testimony was not

  valid. Many subjects described their own situations, and their problems

  were echoed in a variety of sources. These more obscure examples show

  that though the famous couples reaped more publicity, their experiences

  were not unique. Eliot was cultural y more significant than others, but her

  decision to cohabit, the reaction of her family, and the consequences for

  her life, were mirrored in the lives of others.

  The working-class sources were of a wider variety. Some couples

  had biographies and diaries, but these were, by definition, unus
ual. I have

  used the work of historians such as John Gillis and Barry Reay to make

  generalisations about the numbers and change over time of working-class

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

  cohabitation. To find more specific examples of working-class couples, I

  amassed collections of both bigamy and violence trials from newspapers

  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.

  introduction

  in London, Lancaster, and York, as well as neglect and desertion cases

  and trials involving the Poor Law. I used newspapers, rather than assize

  or Old Bailey reports, because I wanted to get cases from the police and

  magistrates’ courts as well as the high courts. Once I identified the cases,

  though, I consulted the relevant court records, especial y those in the Home

  Office files and the Old Bailey Session Papers, so I could get a complete

  picture of the trials.

  Newspapers are also limited in that most of them published regularly

  only in the last half of the nineteenth century. To cover the first half, I

  consulted the Foundling Hospital records at the London Metropolitan

  Archives. I looked through all of the rejected petitions from 1810 to

  1856 (the last year then available to historians under the 150-year rule). I

  consulted only the rejected petitions, since, by the rules of the Hospital,

  no cohabiting woman could have her child adopted. The Hospital only

  accepted the infants of women who had ‘fallen’ with one man, due to a

  promise of marriage, had only the one child, and whose child was under a

  year old. The Hospital rejected any woman who lied on her petition or who

  had lived with her lover. The rejected petitions were also by far the largest

  group and so would have been the majority of applicants in any year.

  From these records, I found 177 petitions by women who cohabited with

  the fathers of their children.5 These are a small percentage of all petitions,

  which numbered over one hundred a year by the 1840s. But this was

  unsurprising, since cohabitees were not welcome, so many women would