Women’s Rights 1 – Caroline Norton (1808-1877)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751-1816

Helen, Caroline and Georgiana Sheridan

Wonersh Park

Almack’s Reception Rooms

Caroline’s decision highlights: An upper class woman without independent means had few choices other than to marry. This became their aim as soon as they were old enough – and they had to follow a list of rules to make this happen It demonstrates the way women were valued – either by the cash their family had, or the charms they themselves learnt to exploit. Women were dependent on the success of their fathers and husbands. Wit could gain attention, but men did not want ‘clever’ wives. Women could not become formally involved in politics

Caroline Norton by George Hayter, 1832

William Lamb, Second Lord Melbourne

Norton vs Melbourne: The Case of Criminal Conversation

This court case is notable because: Caroline was not legally entitled to defend herself The legal position of women as their husband’s possession was discussed openly in public. The press attention was enormous – newspaper, broadsheets, satirical magazines were all full of the scandal. Melbourne was vindicated and could return to his office as PM. Caroline had lost her reputation, and was forever branded as a scandalous woman.

Caroline Norton’s Campaign A husband is ‘the one man in the world who is least likely to be able to judge his wife with the smallest particle of fairness or temperate feeling, and he is the man to whom the judges of the land yield their right of protection, their intelligence of decision, their merciful consideration of individual wrong and their consistency in securing public justice.’

Custody of Infants Act 1839 Permitted a mother to petition the courts for custody of her children up to the age of seven and for access in respect of older children. This was the starting point of a new doctrine in the area of child custody

‘I told you to be aware of your questions if you were afraid of my answers. For seventeen years I have concealed these things, but they come out today because you bully me; and I am ashamed for your client if he does not feel ashamed of himself. My own means will perfectly suffice now that I know Mr Norton can cheat me, and I have no doubt that my friends will assist me more than ever when they learn that the man who calls himself a magistrate, a barrister and a gentleman, and who can also cheat a poor tradesman. I do not ask for my rights. I have no rights – I have only wrongs.’

English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century, 1854

A Letter to Queen Victoria on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill, 1855 the ‘grotesque anomaly which ordains that a married woman in England shall be ‘non-existent’ in a country governed by a female sovereign.’

‘I am not divorced, and I cannot divorce my husband; yet I can establish no legal claim upon him, nor upon any living human being|! My reputation, my property, my happiness, are irrecovably in the power of this slanderer. I cannot release myself. I exist and I suffer but the law denies my existence.’ The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857