3 - A Non-Inclusive Reform: Ireland and the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857

Summary

This chapter explores the rationale for and impact of Ireland’s exclusion from the 1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act which moved English (and Welsh) divorce from parliament to court. The lack of engagement with this reform was apparent across the religious divides in Ireland which allows the suggestion of Catholic orthodoxy emerging as victorious against a liberal reform to be challenged. The Irish Catholic and Protestant presses opposed the bill more forcibly than any of the churches which evidences that Irish resistance to divorce was not always denominationally bound. However, akin to the Irish church response to divorce reform, the press never encouraged more popular protest. That Ireland was seen as a case apart in regard to divorce reform is highlighted by the government’s encouragement of other areas of the empire to apply the rulings of the 1857 divorce act. In consequence, by 1869 only Irish divorce bills were routinely heard in Westminster which remained averse to introducing divorce reform for Ireland. This inertia continued for decades as successive administrations proved disinclined to extend the 1857 act to Ireland and few called for its application.