Courtroom Ghosts

Harriet Richardson, later Harriet Staunton Harriet Richardson likely had learning difficulties. She had inherited £5000 from a great-aunt, equivalent to around £500,000 in today's money, and lived a comfortable lifestyle with her mother. In 1873, things became rather complicated. Harriet had a cousin named Thomas who had married a widow and gained two step-daughters. The elder step-daughter, Elizabeth, had married a man named Patrick Staunton and Patrick Staunton had a brother, Louis. Elizabeth's younger sister was fifteen-year-old Alice Rhodes and twenty-three year old Louis was in love with her. Thus there were in effect two couples/ pairs of siblings - Patrick and Elizabeth Staunton, and their respective brother and sister, Louis Staunton and Alice Rhodes. But when Louis Staunton met Harriet Richardson through Harriet cousin, Alice Rhodes' step-father, he began to form a plan. Harriet's mother, who had remarried after the death of her husband and now went by the name...

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...