Although the sexual double standard endured in the divorce court, parliamentary divorce remained lengthier, costlier and more socially and gender-biased. This chapter examines the profile of Irish parliamentary divorce petitioners and legal critics of the system. Successive attempts to reform Irish divorce provision failed. The personal trials that the lack of legislative uniformity in the UK caused was underscored by the Yelverton case which invoked Scottish, Irish and English law and partially inspired a royal commission to consider extending the jurisdiction of the divorce court in 1861. The commission recommended the unification of divorce provision throughout the UK, but this was never implemented. A further royal commission considered the laws of marriage from 1865 and recommended that divorce laws should be unified throughout the UK, but like the earlier calls for Irish divorce reform, this was never enacted: Ireland remained legislatively stranded. The O’Shea divorce in 1891, citing Irish nationalist leader Parnell as co-respondent, also drew the association between morality and divorce ever tighter and the full force of moral Catholicism was unleashed for the first time.

This chapter explores divorce law reform in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland government liaised with Westminster regarding the removal of divorce from parliament’s jurisdiction from 1931; however, Westminster’s passage of Herbert’s bill along with the reform which in 1937 added desertion of three years’ duration; presumption of a spouse’s death; cruelty, although still legislatively undefined; and incurable insanity as sole grounds for divorce revived the debate in regard to equity of divorce provison throughout the UK. Debates concerning the Matrimonial Causes Act (NI) of 1939 are explored alongside the impact of the reform which transferred divorce jurisdiction to the Northern Ireland High Court, reformed the grounds for divorce along English lines and ended the faltering criminal conversation action, replacing it with a statutory action for damages. The subsequent rise in divorce rates in Northern Ireland and later divore law reforms are explored as well as the continuing moral conservatism bolstering cross-party oppoition to ‘easy’ divorce.

Despite the retention of the parliamentary system of divorce for Irish petitioners, divorce law was not static as the changing definition of marital cruelty and precedent established in the divorce court facilitated more Irish parliamentary divorces, especially from female petitioners. The legal definition of marital cruelty evolved from the late 18th century to embrace non-physical violence, the threat of violence and the abuse of children in front of a mother with intent to cause distress. These legal changes were indicative of transformative social mores concerning men’s role in marriage and the marital union more generally. The Irish body of case law pertaining to this shifting definition is explored in addition to the parliamentary divorce of Louisa Westropp, the first Irish woman to divorce whose case established legal precedent in allowing grounds for divorce recognised in the divorce court to be applied to parliament. Contemporaneous reforms in custody rights also impacted and therefore, by the early 20th century, female Irish petitioners were in the majority in bringing divorce bills to Westminster.

Those of Irish domicile or lacking a permanent home in England or Wales were barred from the divorce court, but parliamentary divorce’s noxious reputation encouraged some Irish petitioners to develop means to circumvent its expense and publicity. Various strategies such as renting a house and paying rates in England were deployed to access the divorce court. This chapter samples Irish petitioners who divorced in court both legally and surreptitiously. A covert court divorce could invalidate second marriages, bastardise issue and contest marriage settlements. The late-nineteenth-century court-based divorces of domiciled Irishmen Colonel Sinclair and Colonel Malone were the most widely publicised of these cases. The legitimacy of their divorces was questioned, and problems arose regarding marriage settlements. The court was therefore increasingly rigorous about testing domicile; a rule that all divorce court petitioners would have to swear English domicile and falsification would bar the proceedings was introduced. However, although domicile was more stringently tested, Irish cases were presented to the divorce court with an increased regularity in the early twentieth century.

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.