Erotic stories and public decency: Newspaper reporting of divorce proceedings in England

The Historical Journal

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 511-528

  Savage, Gail ^a  

^a ST MARY'S COLLEGE OF MARYLAND   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85010165142     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X98007845     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. Stamfordham to lord chancellor, 15 July 1922, London. Public Record Office (PRO), Lord Chancellor's Office (LCO), 2/775.
2. Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, politics and society: the regulation of sexuality since 1800 (London, 1981), pp. 217–218.
3. Peter Wagner, ‘The pornographer in the courtroom: trial reports about cases of sexual crimes and delinquencies as a genre of eighteenth-century erotica’, in Paul Gabriel Bouce, ed., Sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester, 1982), pp. 120–40
4. Lawrence Stone, Road to divorce: England, i530-ig8y (Oxford, 1990), pp. 248–255.
5. Stone, Road to divorce, pp. 290–295.
6. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., 142 (1856), col. 1975.
7. Hansard, 3rd ser., 145 (1857), col. 781.
8. Hon. Mrs Hardcastle, ed., Life of John, Lord Campbell (2 vols., London, 1881), II, pp. 351, 353.
9. Quoted in Eric Trudgill, Madonnas and magdalenes: the origins and development of Victorian sexual attitudes (New York, 1976), p. 138.
10. Hardcastle,Campbell, II, 361.
11. Hansard, 3rd ser., 153 (1859), col. 1381.
12. Hansard, 3rd ser., 145 (1859), col. 143.
13. Arthur Christopher Benson and Viscount Esher, eds., Letters of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty's correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861 (3 vols., New York, 1907), III, p. 482.
14. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 156 (1860), col. 615.
15. John Morley, The life of William Ewart Gladstone (2 vols., New York, 1903), 1, p. 572n.
16. For popular accounts of these episodes see: H. Montgomery Hyde, A tangled web: sex scandals in British politics and society (London, 1986), pp. 95–145
17. G. H. Fleming, Lady Colin Campbell: Victorian ‘sex goddess’ (Gloucestershire, 1989).
18. My own investigation of a sample of the divorce petitions presented to the divorce court between 1858 and 1907 has shown this image of the social basis for the demand for divorce to be very misleading. See Gail Savage, “‘Intended only for the husband”: gender, class, and the provision for divorce in England, 1858–1868’, in Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, ed., Victorian scandals: representations of gender and class (Athens, OH, 1991)
19. ‘Marital conflict among the respectable: middle-class divorce in Victorian England’ (unpublished paper presented to the American Historical Association, December 1989)
20. ‘Divorce and the working class in Victorian England’ (unpublished paper presented to the Mid-Atlantic Conference ofBritish Studies, April 1991).
21. Royal commission on divorce and matrimonial causes (RCD), report (Parliamentary Papers (PP), 1912–1913, XVIII), pp. 147–148.
22. For discussions of the origins of the movement for divorce law reform see: Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian turn of mind (Princeton, 1968), pp. 192–8
23. Ann Sumner Holmes, ‘Hard cases and bad laws: divorce reform in England, 1909–1937’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1986), pp. 29–79
24. Gail Savage, ‘The sexual politics of divorce law reform in England, 1900–1937’ (unpublished paper presented to the Social Science History Association, November 1989).
25. Arnold Bennett, Whom God hath joined (Gloucester, 1985 reprint), see especially ch. 11, ‘A public appearance’, pp. 216–231.
26. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. III (PP, 1912–13, xx), pp. 452–453.
27. See the testimony of Richard Thomas Gates, secretary of the DLRU. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. 1 (PP, 1912–1913, XVIII), p. 212.
28. Barnes judgement in Dodd v. Dodd (1906), quoted in J. E. G. De Montmorency, John Gorell Barnes: a memoir (London, 1920), p. 90.
29. Mrs Seaton-Tiedemann, ‘The struggle for divorce law reform in England’, Sexualnot und sexualreform verhandlungen der weltligun fur sexualreform, OV Kongress (Wien Elbemuhl-verlas, 1931), p. 452.
30. See Holmes, ‘Hard cases and bad laws’, pp. 70–83, for an overview of these developments.
31. See Janice Hubbard Harris, Edwardian stories of divorce (New Brunswick, NJ, 1996), for a telling analysis of the tension between the depiction of divorce in the popular press and the depiction of divorce by witnesses appearing before the royal commission.
32. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. III (PP, 1912–1913, xx), pp. 177–178.
33. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. 1 (PP, 1912–1913, XVIII), p. 41.
34. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. II (PP, 1912–1913, XIX), p. 212.
35. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. III (PP, 1912–1913, XX), pp. 183, 186.
36. See Stone, Road to divorce, pp. 211–30, for an account of the role of servants in marital litigation during the eighteenth century.
37. Fawcett Library, executive committee minutes, NUSEC, 11 Jan., 25 Jan., 22 Feb. 1923.
38. The king's intervention in this matter accords with his well-known interest in maintaining public morality and social decorum. Harold Nicholson, King George the fifth: his life and reign (New York, 1953), p. 429.
39. ‘In camera’, Justice of the Peace, 86 (29 July 1922), p. 363.
40. Schuster to Stamfordham, 19 July 1922, PRO, LCO, 2/775.
41. Maxwell to Schuster, 29 May 1923; Schuster to lord chancellor, 31 Aug. 1923, PRO, LCO, 2/775.
42. Stamfordham to lord chancellor, 6 Mar. 1925, PRO, LCO, 2/775.
43. Lord Cave to Stamfordham, 6 Mar. 1925, PRO, LCO, 2/775.
44. Joynson-Hicks enjoyed much notoriety during the interwar period for his anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic views as well as his readiness to use police powers to censor and suppress the publication and circulation of whatever he regarded as indecent and obscene. His involvement in the prosecution of Radclyffe Hall's The well of loneliness is the best-known example of his efforts on behalf of the cause of social purity. H. A. Taylor, Jix, Viscount Brentford (London, 1933)
45. Ronald Blythe, The age of illusion: England in the twenties and thirties, 1919–1940 (Boston, 1964), pp. 15–42
46. David Cesarani, ‘The anti-Jewish career of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, cabinet minister’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24 (1989), pp. 461–82
47. Geoffrey Robertson, Obscenity: an account of censorship laws and their enforcement in England and Wales (London, 1979),97–103.
48. 1923 annual report, DLRU; ‘Editorial’, DLRU Journal (April 1923), p. 2.
49. See Jane Lewis, ‘Beyond suffrage: English feminism in the 1920s’, Maryland Historian, 6 (1975), pp. 1–17
50. Women in England, 1970–1950: sexual divisions and social change (Bloomington, IN, 1984), pp. 102–106.
51. ‘The press and the judicial proceedings bill’, Justice of the Peace, 90 (17 Apr. 1926), p. 240
52. ‘Reports ofjudicial proceedings’, Solicitors' Journal and Weekly Reporter, 70 (24 Apr. 1926), p. 574
53. ‘Reports of divorce cases’, Solicitors' Journal and Weekly Reporter, 71 (17 Sept. 1927), p. 716.
54. The select committee examined eleven witnesses. These included: Sir Henry E. Duke, president of the probate, divorce, and admiralty division
55. Mr R. F. Graham-Campbell, metropolitan magistrate of the Bow Street police court
56. Rev. John Scott Lidgett; Rt. Rev. Mgr. Manuel John Bidwell, bishop auxiliary to the archbishop of Westminster
57. Sir John P. Mellor, HM procurator-general (king's proctor)
58. Sir Ellis W. Hume-Williams, barrister and MP
59. Mr Frederick Peaker, president of the Institute of Journalists
60. Mr Valentine Knapp, honorary treasurer of the Newspaper Society
61. Mr Frank Fletcher, headmaster of Charterhouse School and chairman of the Committee of the Headmasters' Conference.
62. See Edward J. Bristow, Vice and vigilance: purity movements in Britain since 1700 (Dublin, 1977), pp. 223–6, for the bishop's career with the LPMC.
63. Bishop Ingram was elected president of the council every year for the thirty-eight years of his tenure as bishop of London. Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, Fifty years' work in London (London, 1940), pp. 48–49.
64. The Mothers' Union expressed here a long-standing interest in this issue. In their testimony before the 1909 RCD, the group had opposed strongly the publication of newspaper reports of divorce cases. RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. 11 (PP, 1912–1913, XIX), p. 199.
65. Select committee on the matrimonial causes (regulation of reports) bill (SCMC), minutes of evidence (PP, 1923, VII), p. 45.
66. SCMC (PP, 1923, vii), pp. 23–4. A survey of newspaper readership conducted in 1934 gives some support for Bodkin's surmise about the popularity of newspaper reports of divorce proceedings among newspaper readers. The category ‘crime and divorce’ ranked high in the order of reader preference, coming third behind ‘accidents’ and ‘royalty’ among readers of London evening papers and fourth behind ‘accidents’, ‘weather’, and ‘local news’ among readers of national morning papers. Political and Economic Planning, Press Group, Report on the British press (London, 1938), p. 250.
67. Authorities in Germany similarly struggled with these problems in developing a legal definition of pornography. German courts came to recognize context as well as content as a component of the text's meaning. They also showed a similar concern about the dangers that illicit eroticism posed to the social hierarchy. Gary D. Stark, ‘ Pornography, society, and the law in Imperial Germany’, Central European History, 14 (1981), pp. 217–218, 222, 223–5.
68. Because of its notoriety and its legal significance for interpreting the law on paternity, many brief accounts of Russell v. Russell exist. See Hyde, A tangled web, pp. 164–80
69. Fenton Bresler, ‘A question of paternity: the Russell baby case’, in Harriet Bridgeman and Elizabeth Drury, eds., Society scandals (London, 1977), pp. 141–156.
70. Several of the legal principles in the case have also had their role in it outlined in biography or autobiography. See Sir Ellis Hume-Williams, The world, the house and the bar (London, 1930),pp. 149–56
71. H. Montgomery Hyde, Sir Patrick Hastings: his life and cases (London, 1960), pp. 87–94
72. Edward Majoribanks, The life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall (London, 1929), pp. 426–9
73. Lord Birkenhead, The life of F. E. Smith, first earl of Birkenhead (London, 1959), pp. 424–6. Dennistoun v. Dennistoun, although equally important for purposes of my analysis, has not similarly endured in either the popular or the legal mind.
74. Times, 14 July 1922.
75. Times, 8 July 1922.
76. For an analysis of the impact ofMarie Stopes's Married love on the sexual attitudes of middle-class women, see Ellen Holtzmann, ‘The pursuit of married love: women's attitudes towards sexuality and marriage in Great Britain, 1918–1939 ’, Journal of Social History, 16 (1982), pp. 39–52
77. for the impact of Married love on male attitudes towards sexuality, see Lesley A. Hall, ‘Impotent ghosts from no man's land, flappers’ boyfriends, or crypto-patriarchs? Men, sex and social change in 1920s Britain’, Social History, 21 (1996), pp. 54–70.
78. Times, 22 July 1922.
79. Hume-Williams appears in several episodes in the on-going controversy over the newspaper reporting of divorce cases. A barrister with a long and distinguished career in the divorce court, he not only represented Mrs Dennistoun, he represented the accused co-respondents in the Russell v. Russell case. He also testified before both the 1923 select committee and the 1909 royal commission, opposing any restriction on the reporting of divorce cases because of his belief in their value as a deterrent. Sir Ellis Hume-Williams, The world, pp. 149–156; SCMC (PP, 1923, vn), pp. 61–70; RCD, minutes of evidence, vol. II (PP, 1912–13, XIX), pp. 207–13.
80. Times, 19 Mar. 1925.
81. Times, 24 Mar. 1925.
82. Times, 4 Apr. 1925.
83. For other examples of the way in which the depiction of issues of sexuality in print took on political significance see Iain McCalman, ‘ Unrespectable radicalism: infidels and pornography in early nineteenth-century London’, Past & Present, 104 (1984), pp. 74–100
84. Anna Clark, ‘Queen Caroline and the sexual politics of popular culture in London, 1820’, Representations, 31 (1990), pp. 47–68.
85. Martin Ingram, ‘ Ridings, rough music and the “reform of popular culture” in early modern England’, Past & Present, 105 (1984), pp. 79–113
86. E. P. Thompson, ‘Rough music’, in Customs in common (New York, 1991), pp. 467–531.
87. Nancy C. M. Hartsock, Money, sex, andpower: toward a feminist historical materialism (New York, 1983), pp. 156–179.
88. In Hartsock's account, the destructive features of a masculinized eros structured by a striving for power and domination defines the nature of the power relations between men and women. Here I find analogous patterns expressed in the tensions and conflicts inherent in the hierarchy of class, drawn upon in order to resist, as in the case of the Queen Caroline episode, as well as in order to dominate. The various political controversies stirred up by issues of sexuality also show how questions of class and questions of gender call one another into play. On this last point see Joan Scott, ‘On language, gender, and working-class history’, in Gender and the politics of history (New York, 19878), pp. 53–67.
89. For discussions of the Queen Caroline affair, see Thomas Laqueur, ‘The Queen Caroline affair: politics as art in the reign of George IV, Journal of Modern History, 54 (1982), pp. 417–66
90. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (Chicago, 1987), pp. 149–55
91. Clark, ‘Queen Caroline’, pp. 47–68.
92. For discussions of W. T. Stead's exposure of child prostitution, see Deborah Gorham, ‘the “maiden tribute of modern Babylon” re-examined: child prostitution and the idea of childhood in late-Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 21 (1976), pp. 353–79
93. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), pp. 81–1 34.
94. For two other episodes when sensational press coverage of issues of sexuality took on overt political significance, see J. A. Banks and Olive Banks, ‘The Bradlaugh-Besant trial and the English newspapers’, Population Studies, 8 (1954–1955), pp. 23–34
95. Richard Francis Spall, Jnr, ‘The bedchamber crisis and the Hastings scandal: morals, politics, and the press at the beginning of Victoria's reign’, Canadian Journal of History j Annales Canadiennes d'Histoire, 22 (1987), pp. 19–39.
96. See Lisa Duggan, ‘The trials of Alice Mitchell: sensationalism, sexology, and the lesbian subject in turn-of-the-century America’, Signs, 18 (1993), pp. 791-814, for an analysis of the sensationalized press coverage of the 1892 murder of a teenaged girl by her infatuated female friend. Duggan makes explicit the constitutive influence of such coverage in both popular and scientific expression.
97. House of Commons debates, 1926, col. 765.
98. House of Commons debates, col. 782.
99. House of Commons debates, col. 797.
100. Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality: an introduction, 1 (New York, 1980)
101. Jacques Donzelot, The policing of families (New York, 1979)
102. George C. Mosse, Nationalism and sexuality: respectability and abnormal sexuality in modern Europe (New York, 1985).