Breach of Promise of Marriage Denise Bates uncovers the antics of Victorian women who made multiple claims for damages after being jilted before getting to the altar
W
hen women began to take their first tentative steps towards equality at the end of the nineteenth century, they were more than equal in the eyes of one law. And they knew it. Breach of promise of marriage was a flourishing legal action that allowed a jilted person to demand compensation from their faithless intended. In theory, the claim was gender neutral. In practice, men seldom sued for damages as they usually left the court hearing with the smallest coin of the realm, and the catcalls of spectators ringing in their ears. Women were very clued up about their legal rights, and enforced them, regularly winning a hundred pounds or more to make their continuing solitary state more tolerable. At today’s values, this is comparable to receiving around £10,000. It would not keep the woman in luxury for the rest of her life, but used sensibly, it could 58
provide a little something for a rainy day. As Victorian women had few opportunities for saving because of the lack of well-paid work available to them, claiming damages after a broken engagement was a sensible insurance against hardship. Most scorned women were content with just one claim for breach of promise, but an unlucky few found themselves having to sue more than once. Farmer’s daughter Harriet Roper was already 30 when her fiancé decided not to go ahead with the wedding unless her father gave the pair a wedding gift of £500. In 1871, Harriet obtained £100 damages for her broken engagement. A few years later, the now middle-aged spinster met a young man who worked in his father’s grocery business. The couple became engaged, but James Bagley said he would only wed her when he could afford to maintain a wife. After two years, Bagley ended the engagement and Harriet wrote, ‘I think you ought to be made an
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example of to prevent others being deceived as I have been.’ Her opportunity came in 1880 when Bagley married someone else, proving that he could afford to support a wife and family. This time Harriet obtained £80 and The Times commented that she was in a remarkable and unique position having obtained two lots of damages for being jilted.
Repeat offenders Harriet was not the first woman to obtain damages from two different men. The first may have been dressmaker Matilda Ubsdell, who made two successful claims in the 1840s, netting £300 and then one farthing, which was the smallest coin of the realm. At this time juries seem to have disliked a woman enriching herself more than once for being jilted, probably wondering if she had given the men good reason not to want to marry her. In 1860, Fanny Davies unexpectedly lost what appeared to be a very strong w w w. d i s c o v e r y o u r h i s t o r y. n e t
Women in History
A NEW COURT of Queen’s Bench, As it Ought to Be – or – The Ladies Trying a Contemptuous Scoundrel for a ‘Breach of Promise’, a caricature by George Cruikshank for the 1850 Comic Almanack.
case against Thomas Bomford when his barrister mentioned in court that she had settled a claim against a Mr Skinner by a private arrangement the previous year. By the 1870s, succeeding with more than one claim was acceptable if a woman had been let down twice. Caroline Negus obtained £100 from Thomas Tagg in 1866 when he threw her over and wed another woman. When Tagg’s wife died he began to court his first love again before jilting her for a second time in 1872. On this occasion she was awarded £500, the full amount she had claimed from him. As it was unusual for a jury to give a woman all the money she requested, this case shows that women who had been treated badly on more than one occasion could now receive a reasonable amount of compensation for both.
Deceived and discarded The most publicized case of a woman who made two successful claims was that of Elizabeth Dredge, an attractive young woman who worked at Truefitt’s, an upper-class barber’s shop in London. She attracted the amorous advances of a wealthy American customer who promised to marry her when he became financially independent of his family. On this basis she agreed to live with him and bore him a w w w. d i s c o v e r y o u r h i s t o r y. n e t
daughter, but rather than marry her, he courted and married a rich widow instead. Elizabeth sued him for breach of promise and obtained £1,500 in 1872, an exceptionally generous award for a discarded mistress. To disguise the social stigma of being an unmarried mother, Elizabeth moved to Bournemouth. There she reinvented herself as widowed Elinor Miller and built up a successful business as a milliner and hairdresser. A few years later, she captured the interest of local property entrepreneur, Henry Joy, who asked her to be his wife. When a woman had a dubious episode in her past it was conventional for her to reveal this in confidence if she received an offer of marriage. When Elinor told him about her previous relationship Joy said this made no difference to him and confirmed his offer, but when his scandalized children objected to their father’s plan to provide them with a stepmother, he changed his mind about marriage. Rather than behaving as a gentleman and negotiating a private monetary settlement, he ended the engagement and threatened to reveal her shameful secret if she took court action against him. When Elinor
EVEN BEFORE THE Victorian era, pre-marital relations could be a minefield. In this engraving from 1805, a young man hands a young woman a note, and a poem printed beneath the image is a caricature of romantic courtship: A Receipt for Courtship Two or three dears, and two or three sweets; Two or three balls, and two or three treats; Two or three serenades, given as a lure; Two or three oaths how much they endure; Two or three messages sent in a day; Two or three times led out from the play; Two or three soft speeches made by the way; Two or three tickets for two or three times; Two or three love letters writ all in rhymes; Two or three months keeping strict to these rules, Can never fail making a couple of fools. Library of Congress
began a court claim for damages, rumours began to circulate in Bournemouth that she had never been married and her daughter was illegitimate. By 1883, the Victorian middle class had become very censorious of anyone whose behaviour fell outside a rigid and unforgiving moral code. Elinor’s clients deserted her in droves and her carefully nurtured business collapsed almost overnight. She had the final word when a jury ordered Joy to pay her £2,500
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Women in History
SIX MEMBERS OF a wedding party wait for the minister to arrive in Awaiting the Minister, an American photographic stereograph, created with two almost identical images, one superimposed on the other, which when viewed through a stereoscope or special glasses, give a three-dimensional effect. Library of Congress
damages because he was seen as mean and malignant for publicizing something he had been told in confidence. This was one of the largest awards of damages made in the nineteenth century. It caused a public sensation because damages of more than £1,000 were usually reserved for gentlemen’s daughters rather than working-class women who had been obliged to go out and earn a living. Despite her shocking lapse from prevailing moral standards, Elinor had obtained a lady’s compensation twice.
Fraudulent claims Not all women who sued more than once had been unfortunate in their choice of men. Breach of promise was an easy claim to win because success was based on whether a man had actually suggested marriage, even in a jocular or drunken manner. This made it susceptible to fraud as women identified a naïve or vulnerable man, flirted or conned a proposal out of him and then 60
threatened a claim for breach of promise when he realized his folly. There are indications that numbers of men bought their way out of an unwise proposal and it was considered that a gentleman should make a private arrangement to pay off a woman to whom he had made indiscreet promises, rather than allow his folly to become the talk of the town. A few women were serial fiancées. In 1877, Sarah Deane sued an elderly clergyman, Thomas Oldacres, and won £150. Astonished to receive her claim, which was based on little more than a few conversations at a railway station with a fellow traveller, eight years previously, Oldacres did not take her writ as seriously as he should have done, assuming that no jury would believe her story. Shocked by the outcome, Oldacres hastily employed a private detective, the wonderfully named William Jolly Death, to investigate. Soon it was clear that Sarah was a petty criminal
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who had served a prison sentence for robbery. She had also compromised two other actions for breach of promise in private arrangements. One of these was during the period when she alleged that she was engaged to the clergyman. Armed with this new information, Oldacres appealed for the verdict against him to be quashed. He argued that a woman could not be engaged to two men at the same time and, if she had accepted another man’s offer of marriage, this dissolved any engagement to him. Sarah was told that if she wanted to pursue Oldacres for damages, she would have to do so in a new trial when his legal team would be able to present this new information to the jury. Wisely, Sarah chose not to bring a further claim against Oldacres. Whether she continued entrapping and then blackmailing other men for a few pounds is not known. Irrespective of whether she made one claim or more, and whether she took a man to court or negotiated a private settlement with him, a woman who demanded money to compensate her for a broken engagement was often considered to be mercenary, a little hussy or an extortioner. Even a successful claim for breach of promise seems to have been treated as a skeleton in the family cupboard and not talked about. So when you’re researching your family tree and discover that demure spinster Great-Aunt Maud never went out to work, never inherited any money, yet managed to support herself from a little nest egg she had discreetly invested, it might be worth asking yourself, was she once a woman scorned? I
Discover more Denise Bates is the author of Breach of Promise to Marry: A History of How Jilted Brides Settled Scores, recently published at £12.99 by Pen & Sword. Discover Your History readers can buy it for the special price of £10.99 with FREE UK postage by using the code 151141. Call 01226 734222 or visit www.penand-sword.co.uk and enter the code.
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