Sexual Harassment, Victimhood and Affective Self‐Fashioning in Victorian England: The Bolton Workhouse Scandal, 1889–1890

Abstract

Addressing an extraordinary meeting of Bolton's Board of Guardians on 17 February 1890, Mayor of Bolton John Barrett, JP, declared that he and his fellow board members were victims of a 'foul, wicked and dastardly conspiracy'. 1 On 6 November 1889, Nurse Rose Morris, employed at Bolton's Fishpool Workhouse, had passed letters to her colleague, Dr John Marsh, alleging that 'immoral relations' had occurred between herself and certain members of the board-including the mayor. 2 Suspending Morris from her post, the Local Government Board launched an inquiry to investigate the claims, which, if false, amounted to a criminal libel that could carry a lengthy prison sentence. 3 Disastrously, however, the inquiry's commencement was interrupted by unexpected news: Nurse Morris died on 28 November 1889. The post-mortem revealed that a heart attack following her suspension had aggravated her already weak health. Worse, it stated she was pregnant, a revelation that drastically affected public opinion of the case, although the claim was subsequently retracted. 4 In an act widely regarded as confirming their guilt, the guardians took possession of the incriminating letters, promptly burning them. 5 Popularly christened 'The Bolton Workhouse Scandal', these events consumed the columns of local, regional and national newspapers until the inquiry concluded by exonerating the guardians on 12 February 1890. Yet, the inquiry's reprieve could not restore public confidence in the guardians, whose members struggled to gain re-election subsequently. 6 Scandal played a vital role in Victorian Britain, providing a focal point for the articulation of broader cultural concerns about sexuality, gender relations, the moral integrity of elites and abuses present in institutions such as the workhouse. 7 Although scandals tarnished the reputations and ruined the prospects of men involved (MP Charles Dilke's political career never recovered after he was accused of adultery in the Crawford divorce of 1886), women tainted by it suffered more profound forms of social ostracism. 8 Historians of sexual harassment and rape have noted that since the eighteenth century, female complainants such as Morris fell into a social and legal paradox, whereby the very act of asserting that they had been abused signalled their