Divorcees of History

Sophia Smallman's case from 1880 begins with many familiar notes of desertion, exile, and disappointment.* Sophia and Joseph Harris Smallman were married in England in 1862; he was a mining agent and engineer. In 1864, he left for New Zealand, promising to come back and bring her and their baby son Herbert out to join him as soon as his business was established. Joseph wrote to Sophia "by every mail" dutifully for six years, always postponing the date of their arrival. In December 1870, he wrote to say he was extremely ill and sent her his will, including his interest in a gold mine. However, then the letters stopped entirely. Sophia was understandably concerned about the fate of her husband, and wrote to the Agent General in New Zealand in 1875, asking for an investigation, only to discover that, according to the government, her husband was indeed alive and well and simply not communicating with her. In January 1878, he wrote her suddenly to tell her he was coming home...

If you check the Wikipedia article for the Victorian pre-Raphaelite painter Jane Benham Hay, you read this about her personal life: "Jane married artist William Hay in 1851 and they had a son the following year. However, their marriage did not last long as Jane left London for Florence in the mid-1850s. Around the same time, she met Francesco Saverio Altamura...They married and had a son together, Bernardo Hay (1864–1934)." If you ask art historian experts, such as Dr. Jan Marsh , you learn that "she left her husband William Hay, said to have been a rather middle- of-the-road artist, and their child, to run away to Italy where she lived with an artist called Francesco Altamura and had more children. But really much of this is guesswork." In other words, there simply hasn't been much information available about her personal life, so people made assumptions about a romantic scandal. But what happens if we look at the words of Jane Hay herself in her affidavit fo...

The case of Mary Ann Gray, from 1876, is mostly intriguing because of one specific aspect of her identity: Mrs. Gray identifies both herself and her husband as "deaf and dumb." She is careful to specify that both parties are literate, and that she herself was educated at the Doncaster School for the Deaf, an institution founded in 1829 that is still going strong today. Her daughter from her first marriage, Mary Peel, is not identified as either hearing or Deaf. The official court record, intriguingly, makes no mention of Mary Ann's lack of hearing; it's an entirely standard grant of divorce and protection of earnings based on her husband's cruelty and abandonment. We only learn about it from Mary Ann's own words in her sworn affidavit. Mary Ann's description of the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband also reflects their deafness: "He threatened to kill me and told me by signs that if I did not leave him he would kill me....

Sometimes my British Victorian ladies have more in common with my Roman women than they might imagine. Take Hannah Gidney. Hannah and her husband Henry, a timber dealer married in August of 1874. In June of 1875, they welcomed a baby daughter. Hannah's husband sent her and the baby for a few weeks to the countryside in July to recover from the birth and "get some fresh air." By late July, she had received news from her mother-in-law that her husband had left for Australia. In August, a few weeks later, she took up a position as wet nurse to the new baby of the Earl and Countess of Eldon.   Wet nursing was reasonably common if somewhat controversial among the Victorian upper classes of the time, and generally involved impoverished lower-class mothers caring for the babies of the elite, sometimes at the expense of the health and nurture of their own children.   Hannah was able to parlay this position into serving as a nurse and eventually the head nurse of the seven Eldon...

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. Ev...

Very rarely, I find a case which contains affidavits from both wife and husband, rather than just the wife's testimony. However, this bit of good fortune gives us a more holistic view of the case, so we don't have to rely solely on assuming that the wife is testifying truthfully about the state of the marriage and her financial affairs. In the case of Annie and Christopher Bellew Richards (1881), the double affidavits only make matters more complicated, because they directly contradict each other on almost every point. Our only somewhat objective source here are the comments of the judge in this case, who found Christopher less believable than Annie under cross-examination. Regardless of the truth - what's amazing and useful about this case? We begin, in both accounts, with a somewhat whirlwind courtship and marriage in Brussels - whether due to Annie's insistence (C's version) or Christopher's (A's version). Soon after the marriage Annie found a love ...

Sometimes you start reading a Victorian divorce case and you can see the train wreck coming from a long, long while way, and you want to shout, "No, Martha Mary! Run away fast now!" Only all this happened 150 years ago and everyone involved is long since dead and so I just keep reading, wincing, and making notes for my database. In 1864, the widow Martha Mary Evans, mother of six children under 14, fell in love with a handsome young widower named Robert Raymes, a single father of four children. Now, while the late Mr. Evans had died suddenly and intestate, he left Martha and their kids a substantial amount of property, in particular the three oil and colour shops he had founded, which, despite their somewhat confusing name, were "victualling stores" or, essentially, your local neighborhood liquor and beverage mart. Martha had gone on to open up a fourth shop herself. Martha was a prudent woman, so before her marriage to Robert she arranged for, essentially, a pr...