«He Could Not Hold His Passions»: Domestic Violence and Cohabitation in England (1850-1905)

Abstract

Many historians, including Ellen Ross, Shani D'Cruze, and James Hammerton, have explored domestic abuse in the working class 2. Though their approaches differ, these historians share one assumption-that married couples and cohabiting couples were virtually indistinguishable. In many ways, historians are justified in doing this, since long-term cohabitees did share many of the experiences of those legally wed, both socially and legally. But these similarities can be overstated; cohabitees had peculiarities all their own. The motives and justifications for violence show that for many couples, cohabitation was similar to marriage, yet did not have its security or legal status. The irregular status of the couple compounded the well-known strains of living together in poverty and with strongly gendered expectations. The Victorian courts, too, struggled with the problem of applying marital expectations to non-marital couples; the results could be contradictory decisions and conflict between judges and juries. Ironically, in an age in which many couples could not marry legally, the courts held couples, but especially men, to middle-class domestic standards. 2 I will base my conclusions on a sample of 217 violent incidents within cohabiting families culled fromthe Yorkshire Gazette, Lancaster Guardian, and London Times between 1850 and 1905. To find this sample, I read through all the issues of the Yorkshire Gazette and the Lancaster Guardian (both weeklies) in ten separate years between 1850 and 1905, finding the cases in police reports, assize reports, and magistrates' court reports. For the Times, which as a daily had far more issues, I limited myself to reading the police, assize, and Old Bailey reports for four months (March-April and August-September) in nine separate years between 1853 and 1893 3. I also included cases from other sources, such as criminal appeals casebooks, and supplemented The Times with reports in local newspapers whenever possible. I then looked up all the relevant Old Bailey and Home Office files, in

Traffickers and Pimps in the Era of White Slavery*

“…Indeed, rather than being seen as revealing a specific kind of violence against prostitute women, the 'living on immoral earnings' legislation can be seen as offering a rare 98 window through which historians can glimpse domestic violence in the past: a phenomenon that was very common yet grievously under-documented. 100 The relationships between pimps and prostitutes could be personal and intimate, but were also a hallmark of the systems of commercial sex that had grown up in an era of increased criminalization. In discourses on pimping, the pimp was and is frequently seen as an eternal, inevitable, and natural component of the sex industry.…”

‘A Shocking State of Domestic Unhappiness’: Male Victims of Female Violence and the Courts in Late Nineteenth Century Stafford

“…When violence between men and women in a domestic relationship occurs, it is usually the case of a man attacking his female partner or ex-partner-at present, in the twenty-first century, around seventy percent of the cases that come to court in England and Wales involve a female victim and a male perpetrator [23]. Although it is difficult to arrive at an accurate figure, similar is roughly true of the late nineteenth century as the majority of female violence cases that came to court involved a male perpetrator and female victim [26,27]. When such cases were heard, they would often be the end result of severe or prolonged instances of violence as many preceding instances of violence may have been resolved informally, with neighbours and family providing refuge and support, rather than in court, and almost certainly the tip of the iceberg [24].…”

“…Crone's [35] perceptive analysis of a Victorian Punch and Judy show provides an excellent succinct overview of contemporary views of both violence against women and violence by women. Frost [27] has analysed the interpersonal violence between married and co-habiting couples perpetrated by both the male and the female partner and suggests that co-habiting couples had different stressors than married couples. Turner [19] has written specifically about women and their violence towards other women, mainly during neighbourhood disputes, during the late nineteenth century, suggesting that it was the proximity to one's neighbours, rather than abject squalor and overcrowding, which was the preamble to quarrels, conflict and violence that simmered and flared intermittently.…”

“…However, this seems not to have been the case, especially where assault by working-class women in Stafford at least were concerned [13]. Often, rather than romantic unions, working-class marriages, including relationships which were not formally legalised, of which there seemed to be many in Stafford as elsewhere in England [27], in the past tended to be dispassionate affairs based upon mutual expectations of economic advantage and broadly accepted, if regionally diverse, ideas of domains and responsibilities within marriage [27,46]. However, latent tensions could erupt if role assumptions were transgressed [47].…”

“…Conversely, women's command over the domestic space might conflict with the patriarchal assumptions of an authoritarian man. As D'Cruze [26] suggests, wives who failed to provide expected domestic services, having a meal ready when their husbands returned from work, for example, might be met with serious assault and Frost [27] suggests that arguments over scant resources often led to violence. Although it would be wrong to suggest that such violence perpetrated by either partner was universal, a degree of 'rough usage' was often seen as an acceptable feature of working-class marriage.…”