An Adventurous Life in London


Today we've got two more dueling husband-wife accounts, but it's a little easier to piece together a coherent story, because each spouse simply omits discussion of certain aspects that might prejudice the judge against them.

Julia and Thomas Fleming, a widow and widower, were married in 1885; she sought a divorce in 1887. They lived together before marriage, and, according to Thomas' affidavit, shortly after the marriage she told him that she regretted marrying him and wished they had just stayed "friends." According to Julia, soon after their marriage she discovered that Thomas was a "habitual drunkard" and prone to physical and verbal abuse. According to Thomas, soon after their marriage Julia began leaving the house and spending time with other people and other gentlemen, including eating all her meals, even on Christmas Day, at a house called the "Aubury," (possibly a brothel) and having mysterious carriages pick her up at midnight.

Eventually, according to T., Julia packed up her clothes and furniture, "removing even her wedding presents, in the cruellest manner and from pure caprice, she abandoned her five infant children, husband, and home, to live an adventurous life in London." [N.B.: It is not at all clear where these five infant children came from; given the timeline at least some of them must have been the products of the couples' previous marriages or relationships. There seem to be a lot of strangely appearing and disappearing kids in these cases.]

Julia does not mention, either to confirm or deny, any details about her adventurous life in London in her affidavit. She focuses entirely on her allegation that Thomas himself committed adultery on the 4th of March, on specific instances of physical abuse towards her, like throwing a jug full of water, and on verbal abuse in front of her friends and servants, specifically that "he called me a prostitute, a whore, a strumpet, and a stinkpot." Thomas denies throwing a jug and claims "that at no point did he inform her family and friends that she was of abandoned or immoral character and that he was obliged to keep her under restraint."

If we put these two affidavits together, what emerges appears to be a story of a physically and verbally abusive husband and a wife who responded to such abuse by carrying on her former profession as a prostitute and eventually leaving him. "Who started it" may be irrelevant and is in any case nearly impossible to figure out. Mostly, as in many such cases, the reader pities this couple's five children.



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