The Demography and Epidemiology of Human Health and Aging
Commons by 232 votes to 81. None of this provides any clue to how many unmarried cohabitees existed at this time or suggests that they were anything like as numerous as at the end of the century, but it is not surprising that such public acknowledgement of their existence has aroused the interest of historians. Probert traces this uncertain history, treating secondary sources with varying degrees of accuracy, through to the undoubted spread of open cohabitation following the cultural and legal changes of the late 1960s and 1970s. She shares, apparently unconsciously since she does not cite key works, what is now the common view among historians in this field, that the ‘permissive sixties’ did not spring unexpectedly from, or in reaction against, the supposedly repressive 1950s, but were the outcome of a longer, gradual process of change from at least the 1930s. Probert is convinced that this change was accompanied by a newly widespread belief that established cohabitees had the same legal rights as married people, signified by use of the term ‘common law marriage’. It is perhaps natural for a lawyer to assume that most people do not have much awareness of their legal status until they discover the limitations of their own, when they may experience severe shock. Probert offers no clear evidence that those who referred to ‘common law marriage’ held this belief, indeed the term was promoted by campaigners for such equality precisely because it did not exist. Such ambitions were encouraged by the fact that, as Probert says, tracing the process to 2010, the law gradually gave more recognition to heterosexual unmarried couples, though less than that granted to gay civil partners since 2004. She concludes: ‘My intention has been to set the historical record straight. Whatever one’s personal views, myths and misunderstandings are no basis for a coherent discussion of what the law has been and how it should develop.’ Quite so. # 2013 PAT THANE Institute for Contemporary British History Kings College London pat.thane@kcl.ac.uk http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2013.788320
Living in sin: Cohabiting as husband and wife in nineteenth-century England
Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Cohabitation, illegitimacy, and the law in England, 1750-1914 2. Violence and cohabitation in the courts 3. Affinity and consanguinity 4. Bigamy and cohabitation 5. Adulterous cohabitation 6. The 'other Victorians': the demimonde and the very poor 7. Cross-class cohabitation 8. Radical couples, 1790-1850 9. Radical couples, 1850-1914 Conclusion Bibliography Index
‘She is but a Woman’: Kitty Byron and the English Edwardian Criminal Justice System
In 1902, Kitty Byron stabbed her cohabitee, Reginald Baker, on a public street. Though her murder was premeditated, and she was of a lower class than her married lover, Byron gained the sympathy of the press and public, primarily due to the gender failings of her partner. Based on the legal records of the Home Office and newspaper reports, this case study illustrates the limitations of the criminal justice system in dealing with women's violence, especially in an age of increasingly sensational press coverage. The courts showed surprising sympathy to a ‘fallen’ woman, but at the cost of simplifying her story, confirming misogynist stereotypes and underestimating the danger she posed.