April 30, 1877 --- Advertising for a Husband

The London based weekly, Matrimonial News is a "public nuisance," declares Sir Richard Malius, Vice-Chancellor of the Chancery Court.  "It deserves to be put down if there were any means to do so."  The publication carries what we now would call "personal ads." 

Sir Richard's outburst is prompted by the predicament facing a widow from Monmouth. Mrs. George, whose late husband, a wealthy solicitor, had left her with seven children, had placed the following notice in the aforesaid periodical:

A widow lady, aged 39, dark, ladylike, of good family, nice residence, and income of 700 pounds a year, would like to correspond with a gentleman from 50 to 60, with a view to marriage.

Not surprisingly, she soon received a response:

A widower of 50, medium height, considered good-tempered and a good man of business, exceedingly fond of children, and possessed of some property (real)..

After a brief correspondence, and against the wishes of her brothers, Mrs. George agreed to marry Arthur Clark. She also agreed, on her very wedding day, to a revised marriage settlement - handwritten in parts - transferring "first life estate" in her property to her new husband. Predictably, difficulties arose.  Arthur Clark was not exactly who he said he was.  He came to the marriage with nothing but four children. He was insolvent; his "property" was nothing more than some nebulous American claim. In the Chancery action, Mrs. Clark sued her lawyer and Sir Richard rules in her favor, returning her control of her estate.

What with its "happy ending," the case offered a good deal of amusement, however, The Spectator called it evidence of the "rank injustice" of the laws involving a woman's property: "The man, in fact, can only be robbed if he wishes it, while the woman must be robbed unless she appeals to law to protect her against robbery."

Matrimonial News persisted, exasperating Sir Richard.   He had cited a recent ad from a young lady, "tall and attractive" with £1200 a year.  "No one can believe that a young lady in such a position need advertise for a husband!"

April 29, 1884 --- Women at Oxford

In a rowdy session that follows months of anguished debate, the Oxford Convocation, ruling body of the ancient University, votes to admit women to "Honors" programs leading to a full degree. The first women's halls at Oxford - Lady Margaret and Somerville - had opened in the late 1870's but the young ladies could not sit for exams and would only receive diplomas, not degrees.

Acceptance was slow in coming. Ruskin would not have women in his art classes, claiming "they would occupy the seats in mere disappointed puzzlement." Not for nothing is Oxford known as "the home of lost causes" and opponents of women's education mounted a furious campaign to defeat the resolution. The ultraconservative don, J.W. Burgon (right) waxed wrathful in a sermon at New College, Oxford: "Has the University seriously considered the inevitable consequences of this wild project?" Specifically, in a curriculum dominated by "the classics," Burgon fears exposing women to "the obscenities of Greek and Roman literature ... the filth of old-world civilization." He ends his sermon with the prayer, "Inferior to us GOD made you; and our inferiors to the end of time you will remain."  Thomas Case, master of Corpus Christi college, warns: "Sound learning and the midnight lamp will be succeeded by light literature and the art of conversation at tea-parties."

It is the most crowded meeting of the Convocation in years, undergraduates eagerly take all the remaining seats. The traditional voice vote, ayes and nays, results only in an indiscriminate roar. The members must file out through two doors, proctors taking the head count. The result is 464 for the question, 321 opposed; it is received "with great enthusiasm."

Noting that Cambridge, Edinburgh and the University of London had already admitted women to their degree programs, The Times reports that it was obvious that the Convocation was "not prepared to leave the direction of women's education in other, and as all Oxford men are bound to think, less competent hands."

A modest victory for women at the university level; still, women could not take degrees at Oxford or Cambridge until 1920.

April 28, 1870 --- "Gentlemen" in Female Attire

The Boulton-Park affair, which either amused or shocked England for over a year, begins with the arrest of two well-bred young men in women's clothing.

Ernie Boulton is wearing a cherry-colored silk gown while his companion Freddy Park wears a dark green satin dress, with low-cut bodice. As "Stella" and "Fanny," the two often appeared as women in lesser stage productions. Arrested in the Haymarket, an area rife with prostitutes, the two are suspected of blackmail or worse. They're taken to a nearby station house where a police surgeon examines them "for evidence of unnatural practices." Boulton, Park and four others are soon charged with "conspiring and enticing persons to commit an unnatural offence.''

The co-defendants included Lord Arthur Clinton, younger son of the Duke of Newcastle, who had appeared in public with Boulton as "Mr. and Mrs. Clinton." He died, an apparent suicide, before the trial. Also charged is the U.S. consul in Edinburgh, John Fiske, implicated by his many letters to Boulton. In one of them, Fiske professed "a heart full of love and longing."

The six-day trial was not held until May of 1871 and offered a titillating glimpse at life in the demi-monde. One of the beadles at Burlington Arcade provided some chuckles in his testimony about chasing the whores and perverts from his domain. An acquaintance of Boulton's shamefacedly admitted that he "kissed him, she, or it." Two days were devoted to intensely personal medical testimony; a defense doctor from the Royal Medical College stating that he could find no evidence of pedication in his examination of any of the defendants. Lawyers acting for Fiske concede he wrote the "execrable" letters but portray him as a moral young man who often "sought the society of ladies." Boulton and Park's attorneys depicted them as young men "out for a lark," foolish perhaps, but not criminal.

Despite Chief Justice Cockburn's outburst that cross-dressing is an "outrage" and suggesting time on the treadmill for its devotees, the jury took less than an hour to acquit them all. The Times, while not questioning the outcome, nonetheless worried that "the rising generation is more effeminate than its predecessors, and such degeneracy is wont to spread very rapidly."

April 27, 1844 --- The Case of Mary Furley

To the relief of almost everyone, 40-year old Mary Furley will not hang. The miserable woman had tried to drown herself and her child in Regent's Canal. A passing boatman - hearing a woman's moans - rescued Mary but the little boy was never seen again. 

At her trial, Mary Furley's story became clear. Abandoned by her husband, she had been sent to the Bethnal Green workhouse. While there, her child had gotten lice in his hair,  A drunken barber employed to shave the lad cut him badly.  Mary fled the workhouse and sought work as a needlewoman. Her first meager earnings had been promptly stolen. Faced with a return to the workhouse, she said "I preferred death for myself and my child."

Her pathetic tale notwithstanding, Mary Furley was sentenced to die for infanticide. Sent to hang at Newgate, she was advised to "turn your mind to your spiritual affairs." The Times was merely the most prominent voice urging mercy: "No, the rich, the respectable, the comfortable members of society cannot imagine, cannot picture to themselves, a condition so deplorably miserable as to prompt a woman to
infanticide. Let them be thankful that they cannot; but let them show their humility and their gratitude by judging lightly of a fellow creature.'

On 26 April, Mary was informed that all pleas for mercy had been considered and rejected; her execution would take place on 8 May. She collapsed in her cell, "insensible with grief." The very next day, however, she was told Her Majesty "had been pleased" to respite her sentence. Punch called it "capriciously wicked" and attacked the Government: "In the name of outraged humanity, in the name of a most miserable woman, scourged to agony and madness by the cruelty of unmerited ill-fortune, we ask [the Home Secretary] wherefore this atrocity was committed? Did he not know the wretchedness, more complete in its horror than any labored tale of fiction, that step by step had scourged the woman from the workhouse to the river's brink?"

Mary Furley was ordered transported to Australia for a period of seven years. The Examiner asks: "If such be the Royal clemency, what is the rigor?"

April 26, 1871 --- The Eltham Murder

At five a.m., a passing constable comes upon an injured woman in the woods near Blackheath. "Oh, my poor head, just let me die," she cries before lapsing into a coma. The woman's head had been "battered in a fearful manner." Police find a bloody hammer nearby. The victim died never regaining consciousness. Police made a quick arrest but "the Eltham murder" would not be so easily solved.

The victim is Jane Clousen, a servant girl most recently in the employ of the Pook family, Mr. Pook being a prosperous printer in the City. At her death, she was two months pregnant. Jane had told a friend the father of her baby was 20-year old Edward Pook and their intimacy had led to her dismissal. Police quickly took Pook fils into custody. They found an ironmonger who claimed he'd sold Edward a hammer - identical to the murder weapon. Witnesses reported seeing Edward and Jane together the night of her death. A bloody shirt was taken from his room.

Despite the confidence of the police, Edward had a strong case. He claimed he'd been in Lewisham at the time of the murder. Further, the man who bought the hammer wore light colored trousers, Edward owned only dark. Subject to fits, Edward often bit his tongue, explaining the bloody shirt. Several of the Crown witnesses proved unreliable.  The defense claimed they were "the very dregs of Greenwich." In the end, no one could verify the dead woman's claim that the two young people had been lovers. The Lord Chief Justice told the jury there was "not a tittle" of evidence that the unborn child was Edward's. Edward was quickly acquitted to the "loud and thrilling cheers" of his friends but the verdict wasn't universally popular.

The radical press suggested that it was now open season for masters to rape and kill their servants. 4000 people marched on the Pook home to stage a grim tableaux vivante of the murder. Poole's father complained to the papers of being "hooted and yelled at in the public streets in a most frightful and disgraceful manner." The Times urged the public to direct its anger instead at the police whose mishandling of the case was as "as stupid as it was reprehensible"  The leaderwriter only wished that the detectives "had the acumen with which their class is credited in fiction."

Jane Clousen's murder was never solved.

April 25, 1854 --- Mrs. Ruskin's Bolt

Her disastrous marriage unconsummated after six years, Euphemia Gray Ruskin leaves her husband. While she travels north to her family home in Perth, her attorneys call on the well-known artist & critic John Ruskin in London.  They arrive with two envelopes; in one, is her wedding band, and in the other, a suit for nullity of the marriage.

In March, Effie had written her parents of her situation: "I do not think that I am John Ruskin's Wife at all!" Recalling her wedding night (10 April 1848), Effie wrote: "The reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person." In his response to the suit, Ruskin admitted as much, stating that his wife's body "was not formed to excite passion." While some biographers believe that Ruskin's fragile sensibilities were disarranged by Effie's unfortunately timed period on her honeymoon, others cite what can be called "body hair trauma." Accustomed solely to the hairless nudes of the canvas, Ruskin was not ready for the sight of pubic hair.

Psycho-analytic speculation aside, Ruskin soon declared that he married for companionship and children would only be a hindrance to his work. To a friend, he wrote, "I will not allow the main work of my life to be interfered with." The formalities proceed. Effie underwent an embarrassing medical exam to prove herself "virgo intacta." In a statement for his attorneys, Ruskin insisted his caresses had been rejected "as if I had been a wild beast." While expressing no wish to reconcile, he offered to demonstrate his "virility." He told friends he suffered from Rousseau's affliction, i.e. an addiction to masturbation. It was, however - so to speak -out of his hands.

An annulment was granted on grounds of Ruskin's "incurable impotency." A year later, Effie married Ruskin's protegee, John Everett Millais. Ruskin was accused, with little evidence, of having thrown Millais into his wife's company. Admittedly, the three spent several months together in Scotland and the young artist could hardly fail to notice the nature of the Ruskin's marriage and he and Effie were soon in love. Ruskin wrote spitefully: "If there is anything like visible retribution in the affairs of this life, there are assuredly dark hours in the distance for her to whom he has chosen to bind his life."

The Millais' had eight children. Ruskin never re-married.

April 24, 1871 --- The Match Tax

Police outside the House of Commons clash with a stone-throwing crowd of protesters, drawn thither by a proposed tax on matches. The author of the controversial levy, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Lowe, avoids the angry mob by entering Westminster via an underground passageway.

Lowe (left) proposed to meet an expected deficit with a ha'penny tax on a box of wooden matches, a full penny on the "more aristocratic" waxed matches. In a speech to the Commons, Lowe had jested that the public would not object to a tax on matches when it was explained that it did not apply to "matrimonial engagements." His confidence was premature.

The "riotous assemblage" at Westminster includes hundreds of boys and girls employed at the sprawling Bryant & May matchworks in the East End. The company had predicted the tax, which would not apply to imported matches, would drive down sales and force hundreds of workers onto the streets. Even the Queen was alarmed, "The tax will seriously affect the manufacture and sale of matches, which is said to be the sole means of support of a vast number of the very poorest people and little children, especially in London, so that this tax, which it is intended should press om all equally, will in fact be only severely felt by the poor, which would be very wrong and most impolitic at the present moment."

The march to Parliament had been peaceful until labor agitators rally the crowds with inflammatory speeches. A placard reads: "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate, and insist upon the withdrawal of this iniquitous tax on British industry." The crowd is subjected to some rather rough-handling by police ordered to clear New Palace Yard; soon "an ill-behaved gathering [becomes] a resisting, howling mob."

Support-for the tax, never very strong, quickly collapsed and a chastened Mr. Lowe - greeted with mock cheers and sneering laughter - was forced to report to the Commons that the proposed match levy had been withdrawn. Poor Lowe - who had acted on the advice of several renowned economists - was made to look the fool. The Hornet - for example - caricatured him as "The Naughty Boy who played with the Lucifer matches and burnt his fingers."