Content Warning, descriptions of domestice violence.
It’s time to return to the story of Jane’s sister, Emma, who had been abandoned by her abusive husband John George Herrod, in 1877. In January 1881, Fred writes asking Jane how her trip to London had gone. This date coincides with the records of the High Court of Justice in the case of Herrod v Herrod. The case appeared in newspapers up and down the country and Jane is quoted in some of the reports as a witness. That it was in so many newspapers shows that while not exactly a cause célèbre, an abusive jewel thief being divorced by his wife was still quite the scandal.
In the period between 1857 and 1882 the number of divorces in England rarely went over 300 a year. The great majority of these would have been men divorcing women – for adultery. At that time for a woman to divorce a man on the grounds of just adultery would have been impossible, the law was blatantly unfair in this regard. She would have had to prove either cruelty (and that would have had to be extreme) or desertion. For a woman of Emma’s station, to get divorced was extremely unusual. It would have required irrefutable evidence and a small fortune.
Emma had no idea of Herrod’s whereabouts after his desertion until she read in the newspaper that he was being tried for stealing jewellery from a hotel in Southport, just north of Liverpool. Not only that, but the article also included details of his having got a young woman pregnant as well as his having left his wife and three children in Sheffield.
I can not imagine the shock Emma must have felt. The household (to say nothing of the village of Handsworth) must have been in something of an uproar. The Warburtons would have been horrified. However this was also an opportunity – after Herrod was detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in Liverpool, they knew exactly where he was going to be for the next twelve months.
Against a background of divorce being rare and an option really only for the rich, the Warburtons somehow decide that this is the right course of action. If after his release Herrod had ever decided to come back to his wife, there was nothing in law to stop him, and no doubt they wanted her protected from that. There is also the consideration that being so closely connected to the Staniforths, a prominent family in Sheffield, the need to get shot of a convicted criminal was pressing. Although we don’t have any evidence for this, is quite probable that a portion of the money for the divorce may have come from the Staniforths. The Warburtons, while not poor, would not have had great riches from the malting business. It’s clear from Jane’s letters that , her father, James, had used whatever fortune he had to pay for the divorce.
After obtaining the services of a solicitor, it was William, Jane and Emma’s brother, who took on the job of serving the citation papers to Herrod at Liverpool Prison. James, as well as a publican, was also the constable for Handsworth and I wonder if his connections are why William was able to have as his witness, Herrod’s original arresting officer, Mr Kershaw, Chief Constable of Southport. Alternatively, the solicitor, wanting to create a watertight case, could have been ensuring that by having the Chief Constable as a witness to the serving of the papers, he could then be called upon as a witness to the High Court – and having Herrod’s arresting officer standing before the judge would make certain that Herrod would be seen as the scoundrel he quite clearly was.
There is the further coincidence that the people Herrod originally stole from were a Mrs Kershaw – the proprietress of the hotel in Southport – as well as her daughter, and her niece. I’ve not yet been able to establish a family connection – but it’s possible that Mr Kershaw is related, and Herrod hit some rather bad luck thieving from relatives of Southport’s Chief Constable.
I confess to feeling a deep schadenfreude for this moment. With his ‘fiancee’ Eliza Whithers in attendance, Herrod, has to meet with his brother-in-law and the policeman that arrested him to receive a divorce citation, in prison. Was the meeting fraught with angry words between William and Herrod? Was poor Eliza tearful at having to be the person cited in a case of adultery – knowing that she had been used and left with a child by a man who had never been free to marry her? Or was it all done in a steely calm fashion, everybody just getting through it as best they could?
In the 1880s, there was only one divorce court in England, and that was held in chambers adjacent to Westminster Hall in London, part of the Houses of Parliament. This was a natural legacy from the fact that until The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, in order to get divorced, one had to get a private bill through the House of Commons.
Presiding over each and every petition for divorce was Sir James Hannen, President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. While not considered particularly brilliant or eloquent, he was known to be clear, accurate and painstaking. This seems to have been reflected in his meticulousness regarding Emma’s petition, when he adjourned the case for a second hearing after requiring that Eliza Whithers needed to be called as a witness to prove that adultery had taken place. This meant that not only did Emma, Jane and William have to travel from Sheffield to London in the October of 1880, they had to do it all over again in the following January.
The newspaper reports of the case paint a disturbing picture of how bad things had been. Emma, under oath, reported that to begin with, the marriage had been a happy one until Herrod took to drinking. That he had been a cabinet maker but “latterly he had followed the occupation of a betting man”. He frequently assaulted his wife and notable examples Emma gave were that “in the month of July, 1876, the respondent stuck her a violent blow because she had remonstrated with him for coming home late. He afterwards faced her such a blow as to cause her to have a couple of black eyes. During the month of February, 1877, the respondent struck her with a stick and hit her a severe blow in the back with his fists.”
Jane is there to provide evidence of cruelty, and as such must have witnessed some of the brutal treatment Herrod meted out first-hand. At this time Jane was a Sunday School teacher which could only have leant weight to her reliability as a witness.
Satisfied that the desertion, cruelty and adultery boxes had all been ticked, Sir James Hannen granted the decree nisi. Emma was finally free.
It would be wonderful to be able to tell that after this shattering experience, Emma never looked back, but I have no happy ending for you. I know you can’t diagnose people in the past, but I don’t doubt that Emma ended up with some kind of PTSD after this. Given the blow to the head she received, it’s not so far fetched to wonder if she’d sustained some damage to her brain. The two black eyes after a blow suggest at the very least concussion. Maybe it’s for this reason Emma finds it almost impossible to pick herself up. Jane’s letters paint a picture of a very damaged woman. Emma herself turns to drink and the family all end up having to watch her and not leave her alone because she repeatedly steals alcohol – something of a challenge when you are living in a pub. Emma pretty much gives up taking responsibility for anything and it is left up to Jane and her mother Maria, to be the caretakers of Emma’s three kids.
As far as Jane and Fred’s story goes, the situation with Emma changes how the Warburtons view Fred’s prospects as a husband to Jane. Even though Emma’s divorce would have vindicated her and shown her to be the victim of a deeply unpleasant man, her reputation would have been badly damaged and by association, so would have Jane’s.
We are very familiar with Austen style dramas and discussions of class reputations in the upper echelons of society but it’s hard to understand what bearing these standards had on ordinary people. I mentioned the Staniforths before – Maria – Emma and Jane’s mother, was the daughter of John Carnall and Jane Staniforth. Jane was the daughter of Luke Staniforth, one of the ‘sons’ in the Thomas Staniforth & Co, a sickle, scythe and tool smiths based in Hackenthorpe, Sheffield. Mary, Maria’s sister, who I wrote about before, married back into the Staniforths, and was known as ‘Aunt Staniforth’ to the family. Fred, despite being self-educated and having a secretarial job, was from the slums of Attercliffe.
However I don’t think it is just the damage to the family reputation that will have improved the Warburtons view of Fred. As we shall see from Fred’s next letters, he was going places and rose up in everyone’s estimation by his own endeavours and reputation. While John George Herrod was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to my family at that time, I think we’ll see that Fred was one of the best, and that Jane was completely vindicated in choosing him as the one for her.
Picture credits
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Divorce_a_Vinculo_-Examining_the_Head.png#/media/File:Divorce_a_Vinculo-_Examining_the_Head.png
Illustration for the satirical story “Divorce a Vinculo.” Mrs. Barber shows her legal team evidence of her husband’s cruelty: a scar on her head.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Liverpool#/media/File:Walton_Gaol_1910.jpg
Image of Waton Gaol, Liverpool, 1910https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_James_Hannen.jpg#/media/File:Sir_James_Hannen.jpg
Portrait photograph of James Hannen (1821-1894). Date: [between 1877 and 1891] Photographer: Alexander Bassano Reference code: P677https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Staniforth_%26_Co#/media/File:Thomas_Staniforth_Hackenthorpe_1876.jpg1876 Advertisement for the Thomas Staniforth & Co. Scytheworks from Hackenthorpe.
My Darling Janie 
