‘Like a great many other of the British workmen, when drunk, he came home and threw his wife down and beat her’: Domestic violence and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1878
Caroline Norton (1808-1877) was an author and social campaigner. Having left her husband in 1836, she would have been able to support herself with her earnings as an author, except for the fact that her earnings legally belonged to him. Her earnings were confiscated and her husband left her with nothing. In response, Caroline decided to run up a series of debts which would, of course, be the responsibility of her husband since she herself was, essentially, a legal nonentity. Caroline Norton, c. 1850-60 Caroline's husband took the children; Caroline was not allowed to see them and she had no legal recourse to demand access. In 1855, when Parliament debated issues around divorce reform, Caroline submitted her own story to MPs, writing that "those dear children, the loss of whose pattering steps and sweet occasional voices made the silence of [my] new home intolerable as the anguish of death... What I suffered respecting those children, God knows... Under the evil law which su...