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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Until 1925, there was a common law presumption that a wife committing an offence in her husband's presence did so as a result of marital coercion. However, when an upper-class wife facing prosecution with her husband for a betting fraud in 1922 successfully relied upon the defence, there was a public outcry against a doctrine that was perceived as reinforcing the ancient concept of a wife as her husband's chattel. It is argued that the abolition of the presumption, but not the doctrine itself, in the (still in force) Criminal Justice Act 1925, s 47, while reflecting changes towards a more companionate style of marriage, was primarily driven by the objectives of predominantly middle-class women's organisations. Whether the change benefited working-class wives at the time is, however, more problematic.
1. The Guardian 7 March 2013.
2. Smith (1916) 12 Cr App R 42.
3. While Lord Bingham has stated that there was ‘perhaps’ an affinity between marital coercion and the defence of duress, this is debatable. See his comments in Hasan [2005] UKHL 22. It should, however, be noted that unlike duress (see Gotts [1992] AC 412), marital coercion is available as a defence to attempted murder. Cf. Stallybrass, WTS ‘A comparison of the general principles of criminal law in England with the “Progetto definitivo di un nuovo Codice Penale” of Alfredo Rocco’ in Radzinowicz, L and Turner, Jwc (eds) The Modern Approach to Criminal Law (London: Macmillan, 1945),Google Scholar ch 20, where he states, at p 427, that in contrast to the wording of s 47, ‘Coercion is in general a good defence in cases of treason, and it is not necessary that the offence should be committed “in the presence of” the coercer.’ As a result of Steane [1947] KB 997, it is difficult to accept both the accuracy of the statement and of the existence of the supposed anomaly (in addition to the obvious one of lack of gender reciprocity) that he identifies.
4. A bedridden cripple, present at the crime, was held incapable of marital coercion. See Pollard, 1838, cited in Cruse (1838) 8 C. & P. 541 at 543–544; both cited in Doggett, Me Marriage, Wife-Beating and the Law in Victorian England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992) pp 53, 160.Google Scholar
5. [1996] 1 Cr App R 116.
6. [2002] EWCA Crim 2838; [2003] 1 Cr App R 662; [2003] 1 WLR 796.
7. Halsbury's Laws of England vol 11(1) (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1989), para 24.
8. Quaere whether a ‘forceful plea’ is a mere appeal or amounts to moral coercion. For recent marital coercion case-law in addition to Shortland and Cairns above, see Fitton Independent L Rev 23 December 2000; Richman [1982] Crim L R 507; and the widely publicised case of Darwin and Darwin, available at http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/judgments/2009/Darwin-and-Darwin (accessed 27 March 2009). Here, the husband had allegedly been drowned in a canoeing accident off the North Sea coast near Hartlepool and the insurance moneys collected by the ‘widow’, only for the couple subsequently to be photographed smiling in Panama some time later. Her defence of marital coercion failed.
9. Doggett, above 4, p 53.
10. Hughes 2 Lewis CC 229.
11. R v Vasiliki Pryce, 7 March 2013, at paras 78–80, available at http://www.crimeline.info/uploads/cases/2013/pryceruling.pdf (accessed 15 June 2013).
12. For earlier British scholarship between 1951 and 1992, see the references in Doggett, above 4, p 160n.
13. See eg Yeo, S ‘Resolving gender bias in criminal defences’ (1993) 19 Monash U L Rev 104–117, at 109–111;Google Scholar Coughlin, Am ‘Excusing women’ (1994) 82 Cal L Rev 1–95 at 30–48;Google Scholar Yeo, S ‘Coercing wives into crime’ (1992) Austl J Fam L, 214–228.Google Scholar There is also a 2007 Canterbury University, New Zealand, PhD thesis by Gerard McCoy on ‘Uxorial privileges in substantive criminal law: a comparative enquiry’, available at http://research.digitalnz.org/ (accessed 15 June 2013).
14. Wolfram, S In-Laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (London: Croom Helm, 1987) p 16.Google Scholar According to Phillips, ‘In mid-nineteenth century Britain, women were literally obliterated as legal persona [sic] on entering marriage.’ See Phillips, A ‘Feminism and the politics of difference. Or, where have all the women gone?’ in James, S and Palmer, S (eds) Visible Women: Essays on Feminist Legal Theory and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Hart, 2002) pp 11–12.Google Scholar
15. This is not to argue that campaigners for such legislation were primarily driven by notions of equality between the sexes. As Auchmuty has suggested, those particular campaigners were exercised by notions of men's power, domination and oppression of women, rather than by the pursuit of equal rights to own property in a marriage. See Auchmuty, R ‘The Married Women's Property Acts: equality was not the issue’ in Hunter, R (ed) Rethinking Equality Projects in Law: Feminist Challenges (Oxford: Hart, 2008)Google Scholar ch 1. Arguably, of course, women pursuing campaigns for equality – for example, entry into the professions – might or might not conceive of their aims in those broader feminist terms. It is not clear, for example, that the campaign fronted by Gladys Bebb to secure equal access to the legal profession was couched in feminist terms at the time, though wider feminist inferences could be drawn from the episode. See Auchmuty, R ‘Whatever happened to Miss Bebb? Bebb v the Law Society and women's legal history’ (2011) 31 Legal Stud 199–230.Google Scholar It is suggested that the contemporary discussions over the marital coercion defence did reveal concerns with both equality, in the sense that the ‘chivalrous’ ‘privilege’ for women in such circumstances was a backhanded compliment (in effect, an insult) to which women took exception, and a legacy of ancient notion of male domination.
16. Of course, a number of criminal law provisions ‘privileged’ both parties in a marriage, such as the unavailability of: (a) conspiracy charges when the sole conspirators are husband and wife; (b) the now-repealed (by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, s 73) offence of criminal libel when one of the married couple published a criminal libel against the other, as inferred from R v Lord Mayor of London (1866) LR 16 QB 772; (c) theft charges in respect of stealing each other's property, subject to exceptions in the Married Women's Property Act 1888, s 12, re-enacted in the Larceny Act 1916, s 36 – however, under the Theft Act 1968, s 30, spouses can be charged with stealing each other's property, where the Director of Public Prosecutions authorises the charge (subject to exceptions); (d) the former accessory after the fact liability when a wife receives and shelters a husband who has committed an offence. See Williams, G ‘The legal unity of husband and wife’ (1947) 10 Mod L Rev 16–31;Google Scholar Turner, Jwc (ed) Kenny's Outlines of Criminal Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 16th edn, 1952) p 58 (hereinafter ‘Kenny’).Google Scholar
17. For a brief overview, see Stone's Justices Manual (London: Shaw/Butterworth, 1918) p 555. The present author consulted the 50th edn, edited by JR Roberts. The doctrine in the nineteenth century is discussed in Doggett, above 4, pp 52–57.
18. Comm. IV, pp 27–28, cited in Smith, Kjm Lawyers, Legislators and Theorists: Developments in English Criminal Jurisprudence, 1800–1957 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 102n.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. 1 Hale, 516; Cohen, 32 JP 565; Caroubi, 76 JP 262; 7 Cr App R 149. In Cohen, the jury found that the wife was acting independently of her husband and not under his control.
20. W Hawkins Pleas of the Crown vol 1, 4n (1824, first published 1716) cited in Smith, above n 18, p 102n.
21. Price, 8 C. & P. 19; Torpey (1871) 12 Cox 45; Smith (1916) 12 Cr App R 42; 27 Law J 204. In Smith, after the husband and wife had been convicted of wounding with intent, the latter's conviction was quashed on the basis of marital coercion. She herself had not personally inflicted any personal violence (though under present-day principles she might otherwise, depending on the circumstances, have been guilty under the principles of joint criminal enterprise liability). Uttering forged notes was a felony.
22. Hawkins Pleas of the Crown (above n 20), vol 61, c 1, s 12; Dixon, 10 Mod. 355; Williams, 10 Mod. 63.
23. Cruse (1838), 2 Moo CC 53.
24. Green, 78 JP 224. Whether the prosecutor could then adduce compelling evidence that the wife was acting as an independent agent in order to rebut the presumption in such an uncommon case is unclear.
25. Kenny, above n 16, p 56, citing Stephen's History of Criminal Law vol II, p 105. The latter described the rule as ‘melancholy’. See ibid, p 106. But Stephen gives no authority for the proposition. In his earlier 15th edn (revised by G. Godfrey Phillips, 1936) at p 83, Kenny makes no reference to Stephen.
26. Bracton (Fo. 413b) refers to the case of Roger de Fanborne and his wife, Agnes, charged with uttering a forged writ of right. While the husband was hanged, the wife was released on the footing that she was virgo sub viri sui. Cited in Kenny, above n 16, p 57.
27. Kenny, above n 16, p 57 stresses the causal connection, though the case is not mentioned in some earlier editions. The decision was reported in the press at the time as R. v Peel and Wife. See eg The Times 11, 16, 18, 23 and 25 February, 3, 8 and 15 March 1922. As a first instance decision, the case was not reported in the law reports. However, it is discussed elsewhere. See (1921–1923) 1 Camb L J 336–337; DG Browne Sir Travers Humphreys: A Biography (London: Harrap, 1960) pp 193–197. To fully account for the persistence of the defence up to the present day is beyond the scope of this paper.
28. Auckland Star 6 November 1917, though the Jockey Club concluded that such discussions might not be appreciated by the public at this time of national emergency. For the issue of horse racing during the First World War, see Mortimer, R The Jockey Club (London: Cassell, 1958) pp 147–149;Google Scholar Vamplew, W The Turf: A Social and Economic History of Horse Racing (London: Allen Lane, 1976) ch 5.Google Scholar Before the war, Jardine had previously purchased racing horses in New Zealand. See Wairapa Daily Times 20 August 1906.
29. There is an aristocratic connection between the Rowley-Conwy family and various Lords Langford.
30. The Times 26 June 1950.
31. After his conviction, he still moved in such circles. For example, at the Oswestry Agricultural Show in 1924, he took two first prizes for hunters. See The Times 19 September 1924.
32. Details of his military career are in [National Archives] WO339/22946.
33. A son, Hugh, was born in 1920. He was killed in Holland while serving as a lieutenant in the Welsh Guards in February 1945. He left a widow and a daughter born in 1943. Violet and Owen divorced in 1927 (see later) and she then married John Drummond, 15th Lord Strange, in 1928 (d. 1982), with whom she had three daughters. The eldest, Cherry Drummond, succeeded as Baroness Strange, a Conservative peer who resigned the whip in 1998 over her party's agreement to reforms of the House of Lords. She became a cross-bench peer and died in 2005. Owen died aged 41 in 1935. Mrs Peel died in 1975. Details from, inter alia, http://www.thepeerage.com, relying upon Burke's Peerage 107th edn, and from http://www.cwgc.org (both accessed 15 June 2013).
34. The groom's best man at that wedding had been a fellow Army officer and member of the prominent horse racing family, the Tattersalls. The ushers included notable aristocrats such as the Earl Cadogan and Lord Wilton, and the guest list featured numerous names to be found in Burke's Peerage. For details and a list of guests, see The Times 18 November 1919.
35. Flower's 1882 work cited in Waller, M The English Marriage (London: John Murray, 2009) pp 338–339.Google ScholarPubMed
36. Dyhouse, C Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women (London: Zed Books, 2013) p 42.Google Scholar
37. F Donaldson Child of the Twenties (1959), cited in Beddoe, D Back to Home and Duty: Women between the Wars, 1918–1939 (London: Pandora, 1989) p 33.Google Scholar Indeed, the Press noted at the opening of the trial that Mrs Peel was wearing a blue costume with furs, together with a broad-brimmed red hat. See The Times 8 March 1922. On its resumption a few days later, she wore a black outfit with blue trimming and a black straw hat with blue quills. See Browne, above n 27, p 197. It should, however, be noted that the Press regularly offered a sartorial description of female defendants, as occurred with Edith Thompson the previous December or, in 1935, with Alma Rattenbury during her ‘celebrity’ trial with her young lover.
38. There is a wide literature on ‘companionate’ marriages. For one example, see Lewis, J Women in England, 1870–1950 (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1984) pp 134–135.Google Scholar
39. Beddoe, above n 37, pp 14–20.
40. D'Cruze, S ‘Women and the family’ in Purvis, J (ed) Women's History: Britain, 1850–1945. An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1995) ch 3 pp 52, 75.Google Scholar
41. Ibid, p 52.
42. Beddoe, above n 37. The title of Beddoe's study, whose point of departure follows the ‘eviction’ of women from wartime factories and other occupations, is highly revealing.
43. Nor, it has to be said, did Violet's marriage fit into a fashion, notable among literary circles, for ‘uncommon arrangements’ such as the marriages between HG and Jane Wells, Vanessa and Clive Bell and Vera Brittain and George Catlin, among others, where the pursuit of ‘bohemian’ ideals of freedom and equality marked such marital arrangements. See Roiphe, K Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles, 1910–1939 (London: Virago, 2008).Google Scholar
44. For an overview, see eg Dyhouse, C Feminism and the Family in England, 1880–1939 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).Google Scholar
45. Beddoe, above n 37, pp 22–24; Mackrell, J Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation (London: Macmillan, 2013).Google Scholar
46. For descriptions see, inter alia, Horn, P Women in the 1920s (Stroud: Amberley, 2010) ch 2;Google Scholar Kohn, M Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Granta, 1992);Google Scholar Murphy, R Smash and Grab: Gangsters in the London Underworld (London: Faber, 1993), esp. pp 8–13.Google Scholar The parties held at the mansion of the Great Gatsby were set by F Scott Fitzgerald in 1922, the same year as the Peels’ trial.
47. Horn, above n 46, p 43.
48. See Daily Express 15 March 1922, for details of her income. By comparison Nancy, the eldest of the Mitford sisters, was given an allowance of just £125 per year, while the socialite Lady Rhondda considered that the ‘leisured woman’ on £600–700 a year in 1928 was not necessarily rich. For Nancy Mitford, see Horn, above n 46, p 42. For Lady Rhondda's view, see Beddoe, above n 37, p 115.
49. The Times 15 March 1922.
50. Walker-Smith, D The Life of Lord Darling (London: Cassell, 1938) p 267;Google Scholar according to Browne, above n 27, p 194, ‘… they certainly betted heavily, but not always wisely’.
51. Thus Violet was able to rely on the support of her family during her travail (below), while Captain Peel repaid £2000 of his ‘winnings’ but without acknowledging his guilt. See Wild, R and Curtis-Bennett, D ‘Curtis’: The Life of Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett (London: Cassell, 1937) p 120.Google Scholar
52. For accounts, see Dixon, D ‘Class law: the Street Betting Act of 1906’ (1980) 8 Int'l J Sociol L 101–128;Google Scholar McKibbin, R ‘Working-class gambling in Britain, 1880–1939’ (1979) 82 Past & Present 147–178;Google Scholar Davies, A ‘The police and the people: gambling in Salford, 1900–1939’ (1991) 34 Hist'l J 87–115.Google Scholar Similarly gambling, whether with packs of cards or with dice or other equipment, was also forbidden.
53. Chinn, C Better Betting with a Decent Feller: A Social History of Bookmaking (London: Aurum, 2004) p 116;Google Scholar Huggins, M Horseracing and the British, 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) ch 3.Google Scholar
54. Dixon, above n 52, p 121. On-course betting also attracted protection rackets organised by gangs such as the Sabinis, the ‘Brummagen’ gang of Billy Kimber, the Billy Hill gang and a number of others. Racecourse riots, involving violence against bookmakers who failed to pay protection money, often scarred race meetings. Significant riots occurred in 1922 and at Lewes Races in 1936. See Morton, J Gangland (London: Warner Books, 1993) ch 1;Google Scholar Chinn, above n 53, pp 174–187. Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock reflects this period.
55. See nn 52 and 53.
56. WO339/22946.
57. Bland, L ‘The trials and tribulations of Edith Thompson: the capital crime of sexual incitement in 1920s England’ (2008) 47 J Br Stud 624–648 at 628.Google Scholar
58. For numerous examples of betting frauds, see Onslow, R Great Racing Gambles and Frauds, 3 vols (Swindon: Marlborough Books, 1991–1993);Google Scholar Ashworth, D Ringers and Rascals: A Taste of Skullduggery (Newbury: Highdown, 2003).Google Scholar
59. He pleaded guilty only to ante-timing the telegrams and not to intent to defraud; that is, he did not admit that he knew winner of the race when sending the telegrams, though he obviously did so. He was released from prison at the end of 1922 and returned to his residence in Montgomeryshire. See Morning Post 1 January 1923. He had been removed from the Army list in May 1922 but was permitted to retain his Military Cross. See WO339/22946.
60. The Times 15 March 1922.
61. It was Violet's mother, Lady Jardine, who had been deeply involved in pre-trial and trial consultations with the distinguished defence team of Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett and Sir Richard Muir, in order to save the defendant from prison. See Felstead, St Sir Richard Muir: The Memoirs of a Public Prosecutor (London: The Bodley Head, 1926) p 368.Google Scholar
62. Indeed, a commentary on a subsequent case suggested that Mrs Peel was the dominant party in the relationship, and not only in financial terms. See note on R v Hannah Mary Pierce and Others (1941) 5 J Crim L 124–126 at p 124, where Mrs Pierce was convicted, along with rest of her family, including her husband, of obtaining money from the Post Office by forging entries in pass books.
63. Presumably conscious of his weak evidential foundations, Gill sought to turn established doctrine on its head. For in reminding the court that husband and wife, according to Hawkins’ Pleas of the Crown (above n 20), were presumed to be one person possessing only one will (above), counsel invited it to infer that since her husband had already pleaded guilty, then what should follow was not that there had been marital coercion but that Violet was also guilty. It was a neat argument, but one that appeared illegitimately to shift the notion of ‘one will’ to that of ‘ascribed will by virtue of status’ and, indeed, might be said to reflect a variation on the traditional theme of a wife's subordination to her husband's will rather than a more enlightened view of marriage. But in any event the argument was beside the point, as it did not entail the adduction of evidence by the Crown to show that she had acted independently of her husband. Despite the judge's ruling and his evident distaste for the marital coercion defence, there remains the suspicion that his attitude towards Mrs Peel was, nonetheless, one characterised by notions (themselves perhaps outdated) of chivalry, deference or old-fashioned views of the position of married women, especially upper-class women.
64. The Times 15 March 1922.
65. LCO2/584, Solicitor to the GPO to Sir Claud Schuster, Lord Chancellor's Office [LCO], 17 March 1922. The Solicitor considered that the outcome of the trial represented a miscarriage of justice.
66. Daily Telegraph 18 March 1922. Smith was elected as a Municipal Reform councillor to London County Council in early March 1922. For Allen's career, see later. It seems that ‘couverture’ (or ‘coverture’) was here being used analogously.
67. Ibid. See also Stetson, Dm A Woman's Issue: The Politics of Family Law Reform in England (New York: Greenwood Press, 1982) pp 130, 138.Google Scholar The change in the law only arrived with the Married Women's and Tortfeasors Act 1935.
68. Pugh, M Women and the Women's Movement in Britain (London: Macmillan, 2nd edn, 2000) p 239.Google Scholar
69. Manchester Guardian 16 March 1922.
70. Ibid.
71. Daily Telegraph 18 March 1922.
72. Manchester Guardian 16 March 1922. For Underwood, greater grievances under the law concerned inequality in respect of child custody and of income tax arrangements. For the class composition of organisations such as the NUSEC and the WFL, see later. For Underwood, see Logan, A Feminism and Criminal Justice: A Historical Perspective (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) pp 21, 54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Marital coercion is not discussed by Logan.
73. Wild and Curtis-Bennett, above n 51, p 122. Despite this, Lord Darling had told Captain Peel that ‘It is right that the punishment, direct and indirect together, which falls upon gentlemen of position who do dishonest things should be heavier than that which falls upon poor people, because in the case of people like the prisoner there is nothing which can be called temptation.’ Quoted in Walker-Smith, above n 50, pp 271–272. For a ‘working-class’ case the following month, where Rose Cope was discharged after originally pleading guilty with her husband to defrauding a ‘Farthing Club’ run by them both, see The Times 11 April 1922.
74. HL Deb, 21 March 1922, cols 617 et seq for this and following details of the debate.
75. The times 1 March 1923.
76. See also correspondence by Sir Harry Bodkin Poland in The Times 8 February 1923. Poland was a distinguished criminal prosecutor and uncle of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin. In his letter, he referred to earlier correspondence by Lady Frances Balfour, who claimed that women resented being treated like children.
77. HO45/12621, 4 April 1922. For Simpson, see Pellew, J The Home Office, 1848–1914: From Clerks to Bureaucrats (London: Heinemann, 1982) p 211.Google Scholar
78. Report of the Committee on the Responsibility of Wife for Crimes Committed Under the Coercion of the Husband (Ch. Mr Justice Avory), Cmd 1677, 1922.
79. Browne, above n 27, p 193. Normanton subsequently edited a number of volumes in the Notable British Trials series, for example, that concerning the trial of AA Rouse, hanged in 1931 for the murder of an unknown person in the ‘Blazing Car Mystery’. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act had been passed in 1919, opening up the legal profession to women. See also Auchmuty, R, entry on ‘distinguished women lawyers’, in Cane, P and Conaghan, J (eds) The New Oxford Companion to Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) p 1256;Google Scholar Logan, above n 72, pp 83–84. In Ireland, the first female barrister, Frances Kyle, had been called to the bar only in November 1921.
80. The doctrine did not exist in Scotland, India or Victoria. It was a defence but not a presumption in New Zealand, Canada, Queensland (qualifiedly), St Lucia and Roman–Dutch South Africa. But the presumption existed in the USA.
81. The committee was also possibly influenced by the counterintuitive outcome of the Peel case in which Lord Darling, as we saw, was sure that Mrs Peel had not acted under her husband's coercion.
82. There are countless propositions regarding the distinctive features of marriage (especially topical in respect of proposals for same-sex marriage), a topic too large to engage here. For one contemporary judicial view, cf ‘… marriage is more than a simple contract between spouses … It is a status involving other interests …’, per Lord Birkenhead, LC, in Rutherford v Rutherford 39 TLR 42; (1921–1923) 1 Camb L J 337–339. The case of Colonel Rutherford was a post–Great War cause célèbre. He had been confined to Broadmoor after killing Major Seton in 1919.
83. Report, p 5. See also LCO2/ 721, Avory to Attorney General Douglas Hogg, 20 April 1923, where he thought abolition only of the presumption would lead to ‘great confusion’.
84. Indeed, the Avory Committee noted that the Criminal Code Commissioners in their report on the draft Criminal Code of 1878 had recommended the abolition of the presumption, whereas Stephen himself, in his Digest, had sought to put husband and wife on an equal footing, which implied abolition of the defence. For the code, see Smith, Kjm and White, S ‘An episode in criminal law reform through private enterprise’ in Birks, P (ed) The Life of the Law (London: Hambledon Press, 1993) pp 235–256, where various codes are discussed.Google ScholarPubMed
85. Justice of the Peace vol 86, 24 June 1922, at 294.
86. The prosecution could not therefore charge the Peels with conspiracy to defraud. However, in a ‘long-term’ fraud case occurring around the same time, where a Mrs Celis gave a false reference for her husband to a supplier, Treasury Counsel, Sir Travers Humphreys, advised that a conspiracy charge would be possible if husband and wife conspired with third parties. The only procedural issue would be whether husband and wife should be tried separately. See LCO2/584, Guy Stephenson, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, to Sir Claud Schuster, LCO, 18 March 1922.
87. Kenny, Cs, Outlines of Criminal Law, ed Phillips, Gg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 15th edn, 1936), pp 84, 102.Google Scholar
88. Justice of the Peace vol 87, 17 March 1923, at 201–202.
89. LCO2/721 for this and departmental discussion.
90. The times 1 March 1923. If the law assumed this, averred Viscount Ullswater in Mr Bumble mode, then the law surely was an ass.
91. The number of such cases heard was small, due to the cost and the restricted location for hearings. See Savage, G ‘ “The magistrates are men”: working-class marital conflict and appeals from the Magistrates’ Court to the Divorce Court after 1895’, in Robb, G and Erber, N (eds) Disorder in Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century (London: Macmillan, 1999) ch 12.Google Scholar
92. LCO2/721, William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary, to Lord Chancellor, 15 July 1925.
93. There appears evidence from the trial that she lied to a GPO investigator when she told him before the proceedings that her lengthy phone call had concerned the sale of shares on the Stock Exchange, at the end of which discussion her caller had told her, incidentally, that Paragon had won the Kempton handicap.
94. LCO2/721, Memorandum by Atkin, 18 June 1925.
95. Violet herself was able to take advantage of the new provision when she obtained her divorce from Owen in 1927 on the ground of his adultery with an unnamed woman at the Grand Hotel, St Helier, Jersey, in May 1925. See The Times 15 March 1927.
96. Stetson, above n 67, p 97.
97. For the perception that the granting to women of family ‘endowments’ might unite progressive feminism with conservative elements, inasmuch as it might reinforce the idea that a woman's place was only in the home, bringing up her children, see Dyhouse, above n 44, pp 92–104. In fact, criticisms were directed by ‘old’ feminists at those ‘women-centred’ social reformers, such as Eleanor Rathbone of NUSEC, seeking the introduction of measures such as family allowances. For focusing on motherhood was seen by other campaigners as involving reinforcing the traditional idea of a woman's place as being in the home. See Beddoe, above n 37, p 139. Cf J Lewis, above n 38, pp 102–106. Moreover, Caine notes that ‘This [focus], in turn, involved a relegation of working women and of women's work to a secondary place.’ See Caine, B English Feminism, 1780–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) p 191.Google Scholar For Rathbone, see Harrison, B Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) ch 4.Google Scholar There is extensive literature on the wide range of legislative improvements affecting women. See eg Stetson, above n 67, pp 98, 112; Logan, above n 72; Auchmuty ‘The Married Women's Property Acts …’, above n 15, and other references cited in those sources.
98. Perhaps modern scholars might see the relevance of intersectionality theory here, with particular reference to gender (or, at least, to marital status, and to class). For intersectionality, see the entry in Cane and Conaghan, above n 79, pp 631–632.
99. Tomes, N ‘ “Torrents of abuse”: crimes of violence between working-class men and women in London, 1840–1875’ (1978) 11 J Soc Hist 328–345.Google Scholar
100. Roberts, E A Woman's Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890–1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) pp 110, 118.Google Scholar
101. D'Cruze, S ‘Approaching the history of rape and sexual violence: notes towards research’ (1993) 1 Women's Hist Rev 377–397;Google Scholar D'Cruze, S ‘Sex, violence and local courts’ (1999) 39 Br J Criminology 39–55.Google Scholar
102. Behlmer, G ‘ “a whiff of stale debauch”: summary justice and working-class marriage in England, 1870–1940’ (1994) 12 Law & Hist Rev 229–275.Google Scholar
103. Ross, E ‘ “Fierce questions and taunts”: married life in working-class London, 1870–1914’ (1983) 3 Feminist Stud 575–602;Google Scholar Hammerton, Aj Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life (London: Routledge, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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105. Ibid, p 196. See also Horn, above n 46, p 108.
106. This was especially true of the London-centred Six Point Group, founded in 1921 to secure government legislation for women's law reform. As Caine suggests, ‘Its preoccupation with middle-class and professional women was very evident … in its commitment to equal pay for teachers and equal opportunities in the civil service rather than to any broader measure of equal pay and opportunities.’ See Caine, above n 97, p 185.
107. For Mary Allen, see Boyd, N From Suffragette to Fascist: The Many Lives of Mary Sophia Allen (Stroud: The History Press, 2013).Google Scholar
108. Pugh, above n 68, p 69.
109. Ibid, p 47. ‘Protective legislation’ was conventionally understood as meaning health and safety laws. The barrister Helena Normanton was one of the WFL's leaders.
110. Ibid, pp 51, 99.
111. In 1927, socialist members of NUSEC argued for protective legislation for women workers on the ground that the problems of working-class women were very different from those of middle-class and upper-class women. See Stetson, above n 67, p 113. While this was the case, the matter of protective legislation raised further issues of male control over employment, as noted above.
112. See above n 99.
113. The survey is, of course, very crude and limited in numbers. A handful of cases could not be checked. The cases consulted were Hughes 2 Lewin CC 229; Caroubi 76 J P 262; (1912) 7 Cr App R 149; Cohen (1868) 11 Cox CC 99; 32 J P 565; Price 8 C. & P. 19; Dixon 10 Mod 335 (wrongly listed in Stone's as at 355); Williams 10 Mod 63; Green 78 J P 224; Smith 27 L J 204; Wardroper 29 L J 116; Pritchard 109 L T 911; Cruse 1838 8 C. & P. 541; Knight 1823 1 C. & P. 116; Robson 31 L J 22; Brooks (1853) Dears. CC 184; 169 E R 688; Smith (1916) 12 Cr App R 42; Archer (1826) 1 Moo CC 143; 168 E R 1218.
114. The times 15 March 1922.
115. See eg J Rozenberg ‘The Vicky Pryce case highlights why “marital coercion” should be thrown out’, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/07/vicky-pryce-marital-coercion%20-thrown-out (accessed 7 March 2013).
116. See above n 13.
117. As in Nicholson, D ‘What the law giveth, it also takes away: female-specific defences to criminal liability’, in Nicolson, D and Bibbings, L Feminist Perspectives on Criminal Law (London: Cavendish, 2000) p 161.Google Scholar It receives no mention in O'Donovan, K Sexual Divisions in Law (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985),Google Scholar nor in Sachs, A and Wilson, J Hoff Sexism and the Law: A Study of Male Beliefs and Judicial Bias (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978),Google Scholar nor in more criminological studies of women and crime such as Morris, A Women, Crime and Criminal Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987),Google Scholar nor in Smart, C Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique (London: Routledge, 1976). The campaign to reform the defence of provocation is an obvious point of comparison.Google Scholar
118. The literature is, of course, vast. For a few examples, see Stanko, B Everyday Violence (London: Pandora, 1990);Google Scholar Stanko, B Danger Signals (London: Pandora, 1990);Google Scholar Bewley, S, Friend, J and Mezey, G (eds) Violence against Women (London: RCOG Press, 1997);Google ScholarPubMed Davies, M (ed) Women and Violence: Realities and Responses Worldwide (London: Zed Books, 1994);Google Scholar Morris, above n 117, ch 7; RE and Dobash, R Violence against Wives (London: Open Books, 1981);Google Scholar Skinner, T, Hester, M and Malos, E (eds) Researching Gender Violence: Feminist Methodology in Action (Cullompton: Willan, 2005);Google Scholar World Health Organisation Global and Regional Estimates of Violence against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-partner Sexual Violence (Geneva: WHO, 2013), available at http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/violence/en/index.html (accessed 15 June 2013).Google Scholar
119. This was the view of Lord Darling at Violet's trial. He suggested that the marital coercion doctrine derived from the laws of the seventh-century King Ina of the West Saxons.
120. Dyhouse, above n 44, p 186. The feminist Cecily Hamilton had made similar points before the First World War regarding the ‘lines of cleavage’ between impoverished working mothers and their professional sisters. See Caine, above n 97, p 176.
121. For the utilitarian and metaphysical aspects, see The Times 15 March 1922.