Excerpt from Chapter 3
WOMEN AND THE LAW
When women became involved with the law they were dealt with entirely by men,
from the arresting officer to the High Court judge. No woman was permitted to
wield any legal authority.
Mid-nineteenth century women in Sussex were convicted of a wide range of
offences under criminal law including theft, robbery, assault, drunkenness, using
obscene language, sleeping out, being an idle person, keeping an illicit still,
uttering (i.e. trying to spend) counterfeit coins, wilful damage, receiving stolen
goods, keeping a brothel, burglary, bigamy, arson, infanticide, concealment of
birth and murder.
In Hastings in the 1850s one in four of the people summonsed for being drunk
was female but nearly two-thirds of them were discharged compared with just one-
third of men. For all other offences 40% of women were acquitted compared with
26% of men. This may indicate that the police were more likely to arrest drunken
women (perhaps for their own protection) on charges that magistrates found
trivial, or it could be that the women deserved to be arrested as much as the men
did, but the magistrates were more lenient towards ‘the fairer sex’ than their own.
Women made up one-third of the inmates of Lewes Gaol in 1838 and in 1850
comprised one-sixth of those in Hastings Gaol, which had seven cells for men and
one for women, each measuring 14ft x 7ft and containing three beds. Separate
day rooms were provided for each sex. The table overleaf [not included in this
excerpt] shows the female inmates in 1850, their crimes and the punishments
meted out to them. The list includes only local residents and omits the nineteen
travellers also incarcerated that year. In the 1860s about one in five persons
arrested in Sussex was female but this rose to one in four of those charged with
assault. These assaults were against men as well as women and were usually the
result of neighbourhood squabbles or drunkenness, though occasionally the
parties were involved sexually or matrimonially. Most of these cases were
dismissed by magistrates, who seem to have found them occasionally amusing
but usually tiresome. Reporters certainly made a great deal of fun out of them.
Petty offences for which women were summonsed included failing to whitewash
walls, neglecting to sweep in front of their premises, and various offences against
liquor licences. One Brighton laundress was prosecuted for letting dirty soapsuds
discharge into the street, and several nursemaids were charged with breaching
bylaws by ‘driving’ perambulators on the pavement. (The shilling fine was
customarily paid by the employer). If a retailer’s iron weights were inaccurate, the
customer could be cheated. Martha Comber, a shopkeeper at Findon, pleaded
guilty to having in her shop sixteen old weights that had been rendered deficient
by wear and tear. For neglecting to take them to the inspector for adjustment she
was fined 20s plus 17s 3d costs. Elizabeth Miller, who kept a beer-shop in
Westbourne, was found guilty of having pewter measures and stone drinking
cups on her premises that were not of the standard measure. Her fine was 10s
plus 14s costs.
Some crimes were rare among women. In 1840 Mrs. Wheeler of Rye was fined
£30 (or three months’ imprisonment in default) for keeping an illicit liquor still with
a male accomplice. Bigamy was seldom committed by women — it was far more
common amongst men — and the only example found was Ann Green, who
bigamously married Henry Loft at St Mary Magdalen Church, St Leonards, in
1858. She received six months’ imprisonment.
Punishments were extraordinarily severe by today’s standards but were much
lighter than those meted out in the eighteenth century. Then, for example, for
stealing handkerchiefs worth 10d Ann Colbran was ordered to be ‘stript from the
Waist upwards’ and ‘whipt till her back be bloody’ at the public whipping post in
the Bourne, Hastings. In Brighton in 1795, prostitute Sarah Mitchell was given 450
lashes. The public whipping of women was abolished in 1817.
In the early-nineteenth century, transportation to the colonies for five or seven
years was a common punishment for thieves. Until its abolition in 1867, a number
of Sussex women were transported. For example, Sarah Gorringe of Buxted
received seven years’ transportation for stealing three pairs of stockings, two
petticoats and some other cheap items. Many convicts were destitute and had not
even clothes to pack. In 1827 the ratepayers of one Hastings parish paid £2 12s
6d to buy a set of clothes for Eliza Dean, who was transported for seven years for
theft. It comprised: ‘1 new cotton jacket or gown; 1 new cotton petticoat; 2 new
flannel petticoats; 3 new shifts; 2 new neckerchiefs, coloured; 2 pairs of shoes;
and 3 pairs stockings, of which 2 worsted.’
Boys up to six and girls up to ten were allowed to accompany mothers but no
woman could be transported if she had a child at her breast. Some convict ships
(‘hulks’) were used as prisons and did not, in fact, leave for the colonies.
Conditions on board were harsh and primitive, and the ships were usually rat-
infested. From the early 1860s long custodial sentences began to replace
transportation. A typical sentence was the eight months with hard labour given to
a woman who tried to pawn two stolen tablecloths and a pair of drawers; and the
six weeks’ hard labour with ten days in solitary confinement meted out to a fifty-six-
year-old woman for stealing a shift worth a shilling. Mercy was sometimes shown:
a seventy-eight-year-old woman found guilty of stealing bacon from a Brighton
shop in 1850 was discharged because of her advanced age.
Some of the penalties and punishments seem very incongruous. In 1851 Martha
Veness of 2 Coburg Place, Hastings, was fined 10s merely for calling her
husband a ‘whoremonger and a villain’ while Joseph Lee paid an identical fine for
viciously beating up his ex-girlfriend.
DEBTS AND CIVIL ACTIONS
Civil cases heard in the county courts generally concerned unpaid bills for the
supply of various goods or services. In 1854 Sarah Wheatman, the collector of
tolls at Wappingthorn turnpike gate, near Steyning, sued a man for evading
payment; in 1853 Jane Farley was sued for £50 because her son had failed to
carry out his apprenticeship indentures. An apprentice’s father was usually liable
but, as Mr. Farley had died, the onus fell upon his widow.
Under coverture, no married woman could sue or be sued, or make a contract,
responsibility for a wife’s debts devolved to her husband and a business ‘owned’
by a married woman belonged to her husband. If she was owed money, only her
husband could take legal action. In 1858, when a lodger owed rent to Eliza Wood,
a Bognor lodging house keeper, her husband had to sue him. Likewise, when
Mrs. Brockwell failed to register her lodging house in accordance with the
regulations, it was Mr. Brockwell whom Hastings magistrates fined £1 plus 13s
costs. Hastings lodging house keeper Esther Nash had some hair combs and
stockings stolen by her young servant in 1851, but her husband was named in
court as the victim, even though only Mrs. Nash and the accused woman
attended the hearing and the stolen items were clearly ones of female attire.
When, in 1870, Mrs. Croft, landlady of the Bohemia Arms, Hastings, wished to
take legal action against Henry Towner, only Mr. Croft could sue. Mr. Towner had
boasted loudly in the Plasterer’s Arms that he had slept with Mrs. Croft. He was
found guilty of slander and it was Mr. Croft, not his wife, who was awarded £25
damages.
It was customary for households to run up debts with shopkeepers and to pay
them upon invoice at the end of a quarter. A wife would order all the items she
needed for the household and the husband was legally obliged to settle the
account. However, if his wife left him, a husband could place an advert in the local
press warning traders that he would no longer be responsible for her debts. This
arrangement was not without its drawbacks. In 1866 widow Jane Eaton, a small
shopkeeper at Guestling, attempted to sue Spencer Willard for £4. 9s 8d for
groceries and flour supplied to his wife. Mr. Willard had published a disclaimer but
Mrs. Eaton had not seen it. He refused to pay the bill, and challenged Mrs. Eaton
to sue him. The judge ruled that Mrs. Eaton had been ‘very imprudent’ to supply
the goods and found for the defendant. When Mrs. Eaton asked who was to pay
her, the judge replied, ‘She could not sue the wife, for she had a husband, nor the
husband, because he had forewarned her not to supply his wife.’
A judge could also overrule or extend coverture if he felt so inclined and had
good cause. A case in which it was extended concerned married shopkeeper
Jane Foster of 104 All Saints’ Street, Hastings, who was sued by her
greengrocery wholesaler in 1864 for a debt of £8. She pleaded coverture;
however, after being subjected to a ‘searching cross-examination’ by the plaintiff’
s counsel she admitted that for eight years she had conducted a sexual
relationship with her lodger (her husband, presumably, having moved out). The
judge stopped the case, saying that a woman living in adultery could not claim
coverture.
Conversely, it seems that a judge could also decide to extend the legal definition
of coverture. An example of this occurred in 1861. William Phillips was sued for
£1. 19s 1d, the total of an account incurred by a woman calling herself his wife
with shopkeeper Martha Clark for the supply of bread and butter. Mr. Phillips
refused to pay, as the pair were not legally married. The judge told him that, as
he had cohabited for twenty years with the woman who had run up the bill and
had produced with her a large family, ‘he must put up with the consequences’.
Even in the case of physical assault upon her, a married woman could not sue. In
1849 railwayman John Storey of Pevensey raped ‘the wife of Mr. Frederick
Whyborn’ in a railway carriage, and for some reason a civil, not criminal action
was taken. According to the law it was Mr. Whyborn’s ‘property’ that had
sustained the damage and the decision to prosecute was his alone. Although Mr.
Whyborn won the case, Mr. Storey was merely fined £1 with 17s 6d costs, an
outrageously lenient punishment.
AFFILIATION
Most non-criminal cases that brought women to the magistrates’ courts as
plaintiffs were those in which affiliation was sought. A woman who bore a child out
of wedlock could apply for a court order to make the father pay a small sum
towards the child’s upkeep. Women could also claim about 10s for the expenses
of confinement, including the midwife’s fee, although this was denied to Cordelia
Clarke of Hastings in 1852 on the grounds that it was her second illegitimate
child. Magistrates did not want to be seen to condone fornication.
Having several children out of wedlock did not, however, disqualify a woman from
obtaining an affiliation order. At Rottingdean in 1866 Jane Leany, who had
already borne four children by four different men, managed to obtain an affiliation
order for 1s 6d a week against a farmer called George Guy in respect of her fifth
child. In the days prior to DNA tests, only circumstantial evidence could be
brought. The fact that he had ‘kept company with her’ and, she alleged, promised
to marry her, was enough to convince the magistrate that the child was Mr. Guy’s.
Another spinster with five children, Charlotte Blunden of South Bersted, was
described by the local newspaper as ‘a very modest, respectable-looking
woman.’ Her second child was affiliated to a local baker; the first, third and
fourth were ‘unaccounted for’, and the fifth she attempted to affiliate to the
father of the second. The magistrates concurred and ordered him to pay 1s
6d a week.
Servicemen were exempt from paying anything towards the keep of their
illegitimate offspring. In 1854 seventeen-year-old agricultural labourer John Cluer
of Westhampnett, who had just been sentenced to twenty-one days with hard
labour for refusing to comply with an affiliation order, was advised by the
magistrate — the Duke of Arundel — to ‘evade the responsibility by volunteering
to fight his country’s battles in either the army or navy’.
Those seeking affiliation orders were usually working class but in 1857 a thrilling
scandal filled the national and provincial newspaper columns. It involved Mrs. Ann
Thatcher, whose father and late husband were army officers, and Henry Torrens
d’Aguilar, an army colonel living at 20 Brunswick Square, both parties were ‘well
known in the fashionable circles of Brighton’. Each engaged an eminent London
barrister and battle commenced. In 1853 the couple ‘had connexion’ in her
lodgings in Montpelier Street and later at 14 Charlotte Street, and a child was
born that year; he was placed with a Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jenner of Preston to be
raised. The colonel gave Mrs. Thatcher hush money of £30 a year for two years,
which ceased when he heard that she was ‘receiving’ other men. She sued him,
and he was ordered to pay 2s 6d a week for the child’s maintenance. Expecting
more that that because of the colonel’s high place in society, Mrs. Thatcher cited
him for affiliation in 1857. Witnesses stated that she ‘led a grossly immoral life’;
one even called her ‘a common prostitute’. Nevertheless, she won the case and
was awarded £50 a year. Three weeks later Mrs. Thatcher sued for breach of
promise of marriage. While giving evidence her fourteen-year-old daughter,
Annie Breddon Thatcher, revealed that her mother often had gentleman friends
to stay the night, and the case was immediately dismissed.
End of excerpt from Chapter 3.
To read more, order your copy of Women of Victorian Sussex
WOMEN AND THE LAW
When women became involved with the law they were dealt with entirely by men,
from the arresting officer to the High Court judge. No woman was permitted to
wield any legal authority.
Mid-nineteenth century women in Sussex were convicted of a wide range of
offences under criminal law including theft, robbery, assault, drunkenness, using
obscene language, sleeping out, being an idle person, keeping an illicit still,
uttering (i.e. trying to spend) counterfeit coins, wilful damage, receiving stolen
goods, keeping a brothel, burglary, bigamy, arson, infanticide, concealment of
birth and murder.
In Hastings in the 1850s one in four of the people summonsed for being drunk
was female but nearly two-thirds of them were discharged compared with just one-
third of men. For all other offences 40% of women were acquitted compared with
26% of men. This may indicate that the police were more likely to arrest drunken
women (perhaps for their own protection) on charges that magistrates found
trivial, or it could be that the women deserved to be arrested as much as the men
did, but the magistrates were more lenient towards ‘the fairer sex’ than their own.
Women made up one-third of the inmates of Lewes Gaol in 1838 and in 1850
comprised one-sixth of those in Hastings Gaol, which had seven cells for men and
one for women, each measuring 14ft x 7ft and containing three beds. Separate
day rooms were provided for each sex. The table overleaf [not included in this
excerpt] shows the female inmates in 1850, their crimes and the punishments
meted out to them. The list includes only local residents and omits the nineteen
travellers also incarcerated that year. In the 1860s about one in five persons
arrested in Sussex was female but this rose to one in four of those charged with
assault. These assaults were against men as well as women and were usually the
result of neighbourhood squabbles or drunkenness, though occasionally the
parties were involved sexually or matrimonially. Most of these cases were
dismissed by magistrates, who seem to have found them occasionally amusing
but usually tiresome. Reporters certainly made a great deal of fun out of them.
Petty offences for which women were summonsed included failing to whitewash
walls, neglecting to sweep in front of their premises, and various offences against
liquor licences. One Brighton laundress was prosecuted for letting dirty soapsuds
discharge into the street, and several nursemaids were charged with breaching
bylaws by ‘driving’ perambulators on the pavement. (The shilling fine was
customarily paid by the employer). If a retailer’s iron weights were inaccurate, the
customer could be cheated. Martha Comber, a shopkeeper at Findon, pleaded
guilty to having in her shop sixteen old weights that had been rendered deficient
by wear and tear. For neglecting to take them to the inspector for adjustment she
was fined 20s plus 17s 3d costs. Elizabeth Miller, who kept a beer-shop in
Westbourne, was found guilty of having pewter measures and stone drinking
cups on her premises that were not of the standard measure. Her fine was 10s
plus 14s costs.
Some crimes were rare among women. In 1840 Mrs. Wheeler of Rye was fined
£30 (or three months’ imprisonment in default) for keeping an illicit liquor still with
a male accomplice. Bigamy was seldom committed by women — it was far more
common amongst men — and the only example found was Ann Green, who
bigamously married Henry Loft at St Mary Magdalen Church, St Leonards, in
1858. She received six months’ imprisonment.
Punishments were extraordinarily severe by today’s standards but were much
lighter than those meted out in the eighteenth century. Then, for example, for
stealing handkerchiefs worth 10d Ann Colbran was ordered to be ‘stript from the
Waist upwards’ and ‘whipt till her back be bloody’ at the public whipping post in
the Bourne, Hastings. In Brighton in 1795, prostitute Sarah Mitchell was given 450
lashes. The public whipping of women was abolished in 1817.
In the early-nineteenth century, transportation to the colonies for five or seven
years was a common punishment for thieves. Until its abolition in 1867, a number
of Sussex women were transported. For example, Sarah Gorringe of Buxted
received seven years’ transportation for stealing three pairs of stockings, two
petticoats and some other cheap items. Many convicts were destitute and had not
even clothes to pack. In 1827 the ratepayers of one Hastings parish paid £2 12s
6d to buy a set of clothes for Eliza Dean, who was transported for seven years for
theft. It comprised: ‘1 new cotton jacket or gown; 1 new cotton petticoat; 2 new
flannel petticoats; 3 new shifts; 2 new neckerchiefs, coloured; 2 pairs of shoes;
and 3 pairs stockings, of which 2 worsted.’
Boys up to six and girls up to ten were allowed to accompany mothers but no
woman could be transported if she had a child at her breast. Some convict ships
(‘hulks’) were used as prisons and did not, in fact, leave for the colonies.
Conditions on board were harsh and primitive, and the ships were usually rat-
infested. From the early 1860s long custodial sentences began to replace
transportation. A typical sentence was the eight months with hard labour given to
a woman who tried to pawn two stolen tablecloths and a pair of drawers; and the
six weeks’ hard labour with ten days in solitary confinement meted out to a fifty-six-
year-old woman for stealing a shift worth a shilling. Mercy was sometimes shown:
a seventy-eight-year-old woman found guilty of stealing bacon from a Brighton
shop in 1850 was discharged because of her advanced age.
Some of the penalties and punishments seem very incongruous. In 1851 Martha
Veness of 2 Coburg Place, Hastings, was fined 10s merely for calling her
husband a ‘whoremonger and a villain’ while Joseph Lee paid an identical fine for
viciously beating up his ex-girlfriend.
DEBTS AND CIVIL ACTIONS
Civil cases heard in the county courts generally concerned unpaid bills for the
supply of various goods or services. In 1854 Sarah Wheatman, the collector of
tolls at Wappingthorn turnpike gate, near Steyning, sued a man for evading
payment; in 1853 Jane Farley was sued for £50 because her son had failed to
carry out his apprenticeship indentures. An apprentice’s father was usually liable
but, as Mr. Farley had died, the onus fell upon his widow.
Under coverture, no married woman could sue or be sued, or make a contract,
responsibility for a wife’s debts devolved to her husband and a business ‘owned’
by a married woman belonged to her husband. If she was owed money, only her
husband could take legal action. In 1858, when a lodger owed rent to Eliza Wood,
a Bognor lodging house keeper, her husband had to sue him. Likewise, when
Mrs. Brockwell failed to register her lodging house in accordance with the
regulations, it was Mr. Brockwell whom Hastings magistrates fined £1 plus 13s
costs. Hastings lodging house keeper Esther Nash had some hair combs and
stockings stolen by her young servant in 1851, but her husband was named in
court as the victim, even though only Mrs. Nash and the accused woman
attended the hearing and the stolen items were clearly ones of female attire.
When, in 1870, Mrs. Croft, landlady of the Bohemia Arms, Hastings, wished to
take legal action against Henry Towner, only Mr. Croft could sue. Mr. Towner had
boasted loudly in the Plasterer’s Arms that he had slept with Mrs. Croft. He was
found guilty of slander and it was Mr. Croft, not his wife, who was awarded £25
damages.
It was customary for households to run up debts with shopkeepers and to pay
them upon invoice at the end of a quarter. A wife would order all the items she
needed for the household and the husband was legally obliged to settle the
account. However, if his wife left him, a husband could place an advert in the local
press warning traders that he would no longer be responsible for her debts. This
arrangement was not without its drawbacks. In 1866 widow Jane Eaton, a small
shopkeeper at Guestling, attempted to sue Spencer Willard for £4. 9s 8d for
groceries and flour supplied to his wife. Mr. Willard had published a disclaimer but
Mrs. Eaton had not seen it. He refused to pay the bill, and challenged Mrs. Eaton
to sue him. The judge ruled that Mrs. Eaton had been ‘very imprudent’ to supply
the goods and found for the defendant. When Mrs. Eaton asked who was to pay
her, the judge replied, ‘She could not sue the wife, for she had a husband, nor the
husband, because he had forewarned her not to supply his wife.’
A judge could also overrule or extend coverture if he felt so inclined and had
good cause. A case in which it was extended concerned married shopkeeper
Jane Foster of 104 All Saints’ Street, Hastings, who was sued by her
greengrocery wholesaler in 1864 for a debt of £8. She pleaded coverture;
however, after being subjected to a ‘searching cross-examination’ by the plaintiff’
s counsel she admitted that for eight years she had conducted a sexual
relationship with her lodger (her husband, presumably, having moved out). The
judge stopped the case, saying that a woman living in adultery could not claim
coverture.
Conversely, it seems that a judge could also decide to extend the legal definition
of coverture. An example of this occurred in 1861. William Phillips was sued for
£1. 19s 1d, the total of an account incurred by a woman calling herself his wife
with shopkeeper Martha Clark for the supply of bread and butter. Mr. Phillips
refused to pay, as the pair were not legally married. The judge told him that, as
he had cohabited for twenty years with the woman who had run up the bill and
had produced with her a large family, ‘he must put up with the consequences’.
Even in the case of physical assault upon her, a married woman could not sue. In
1849 railwayman John Storey of Pevensey raped ‘the wife of Mr. Frederick
Whyborn’ in a railway carriage, and for some reason a civil, not criminal action
was taken. According to the law it was Mr. Whyborn’s ‘property’ that had
sustained the damage and the decision to prosecute was his alone. Although Mr.
Whyborn won the case, Mr. Storey was merely fined £1 with 17s 6d costs, an
outrageously lenient punishment.
AFFILIATION
Most non-criminal cases that brought women to the magistrates’ courts as
plaintiffs were those in which affiliation was sought. A woman who bore a child out
of wedlock could apply for a court order to make the father pay a small sum
towards the child’s upkeep. Women could also claim about 10s for the expenses
of confinement, including the midwife’s fee, although this was denied to Cordelia
Clarke of Hastings in 1852 on the grounds that it was her second illegitimate
child. Magistrates did not want to be seen to condone fornication.
Having several children out of wedlock did not, however, disqualify a woman from
obtaining an affiliation order. At Rottingdean in 1866 Jane Leany, who had
already borne four children by four different men, managed to obtain an affiliation
order for 1s 6d a week against a farmer called George Guy in respect of her fifth
child. In the days prior to DNA tests, only circumstantial evidence could be
brought. The fact that he had ‘kept company with her’ and, she alleged, promised
to marry her, was enough to convince the magistrate that the child was Mr. Guy’s.
Another spinster with five children, Charlotte Blunden of South Bersted, was
described by the local newspaper as ‘a very modest, respectable-looking
woman.’ Her second child was affiliated to a local baker; the first, third and
fourth were ‘unaccounted for’, and the fifth she attempted to affiliate to the
father of the second. The magistrates concurred and ordered him to pay 1s
6d a week.
Servicemen were exempt from paying anything towards the keep of their
illegitimate offspring. In 1854 seventeen-year-old agricultural labourer John Cluer
of Westhampnett, who had just been sentenced to twenty-one days with hard
labour for refusing to comply with an affiliation order, was advised by the
magistrate — the Duke of Arundel — to ‘evade the responsibility by volunteering
to fight his country’s battles in either the army or navy’.
Those seeking affiliation orders were usually working class but in 1857 a thrilling
scandal filled the national and provincial newspaper columns. It involved Mrs. Ann
Thatcher, whose father and late husband were army officers, and Henry Torrens
d’Aguilar, an army colonel living at 20 Brunswick Square, both parties were ‘well
known in the fashionable circles of Brighton’. Each engaged an eminent London
barrister and battle commenced. In 1853 the couple ‘had connexion’ in her
lodgings in Montpelier Street and later at 14 Charlotte Street, and a child was
born that year; he was placed with a Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jenner of Preston to be
raised. The colonel gave Mrs. Thatcher hush money of £30 a year for two years,
which ceased when he heard that she was ‘receiving’ other men. She sued him,
and he was ordered to pay 2s 6d a week for the child’s maintenance. Expecting
more that that because of the colonel’s high place in society, Mrs. Thatcher cited
him for affiliation in 1857. Witnesses stated that she ‘led a grossly immoral life’;
one even called her ‘a common prostitute’. Nevertheless, she won the case and
was awarded £50 a year. Three weeks later Mrs. Thatcher sued for breach of
promise of marriage. While giving evidence her fourteen-year-old daughter,
Annie Breddon Thatcher, revealed that her mother often had gentleman friends
to stay the night, and the case was immediately dismissed.
End of excerpt from Chapter 3.
To read more, order your copy of Women of Victorian Sussex
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| Excerpts |
Women of Victorian Sussex
Their Status, Occupations and Dealings with the Law 1830~1870