Women of Victorian Sussex: Their Status, Occupations and Dealings with the Law, 1830-1870 [Paperback]

Well-researched, scholarly and immensely readable ... provides a vivid account of life lived by women.

Will keep the reader spellbound. A fine reference book, worthy of a place on any historian’s book shelf.

The book is a riot of colourful detail and diverting insight.

Rather splendid... Fascinating stuff.

A delightful read as well as an informative one.

Miss Wojtczak has added a new lustre to the re-discovered history of women.

Essential reading for those who wish to study early social conditions as part of their family or local history.

A forgotten world of daily struggles against appalling injustice – tragic, brave, stubborn, desperate and comic.

This work is a unique piece of research in areas so far neglected - women's occupations and their dealings with the law as plaintiffs and defendants. The author writes in a plain and straightforward style, which makes the book suitable for any adult reader. A comprehensive introductory chapter tells you all the background information you need to know about women's status in the mid-19th century, so that the main sections of the book are put into context. This book is highly educational, but at the same time entertaining. The many illustrations will amaze people who thought Victorian women did not go out to work or were not involved in business or trades. This book is a microcosm of Englishwomen's lives in the mid-19th century.

HELENA WOJTCZAK BSC (HONS) was born in Shoreham-by-Sea and grew up in Brighton and London. While working for the railway she took a degree in social sciences, specialising in psychology, followed by three years’ postgraduate study in social and oral history. She has been a Consultant
Historian to the National Railway Museum, for which she co-wrote a major exhibition on female railway workers in 1996-7. In 1998 St Mary-in-the-Castle Arts Centre, Hastings, displayed her research on the suffrage movement and in 2002 she wrote and produced an exhibition on Victorian
Working Women for Hastings Museum.

Helena has written and designed two award-winning history websites: Railway Women in Wartime and Women of
Hastings and St Leonards and has contributed to several others including The Victorian Web and Encyclopedia Titanica. She has been featured in newspapers
and magazines, and has appeared on BBC television and radio.

Helena has previously written for the Oxford University Press, the Railway Ancestors Family History Society, the Hastings Press and Hunter House Publishing, as well as for various magazines. She lives in Sussex.

Excerpt from Chapter One:

Despite its romantic image, marriage in the early-19th century was hardly better than slavery, hidden under many layers of hypocrisy. Like a slave, a wife lost her identity, was stripped of her property, had no rights to her own children and could not leave without her master’s permission.

Although marriage was disadvantageous to them, most women wanted to marry. Spinsterhood constituted failure, and women were indoctrinated to believe that marriage was their God-given purpose in life. It was essential for
a woman to be married in order to be seen as both mature and respectable.

In the mid-19th century, 86% of women married at least once. Women were under considerable monetary as well as social pressure to marry. A middle class woman without an inheritance had so few employment possibilities that she was obliged to marry for financial support.

In 1854, the Sussex-born feminist Barbara Leigh Smith described this as ‘legal prostitution’ because a wife could not withhold consent to sex.

A wife lived under ‘coverture’. This meant she surrendered her legal existence upon marriage: she was a feme covert (from the Anglo-Norman: feme,‘woman’ and the Old French covert, ‘covered’, or ‘hidden’.) In 1765 Judge
William Blackstone had explained a wife’s legal position:
"By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called ... a feme covert."

Wedding vows were devised by men. They included a promise by the wife to obey her husband. Such a promise, sworn before God, was considered binding by most women. In return, men vowed ‘with all my worldly goods I thee endow’, but, ironically, the opposite was true. Upon
marriage, a woman’s personal property, that is, money from her earnings or investments and belongings such as furniture and jewellery, was automatically transferred to the control of her spouse, who could dispose of
it however he saw fit. All income from a woman’s real property (that is, property held in the form of freehold land), also passed under common law to her husband, though he could not dispose of it without her consent.

If a married woman had a business, it belonged in law to her husband, even if she alone had provided the capital and ran it without his involvement. Her husband was entitled to its profits and was responsible for
its debts. A married woman’s legal inability to make contracts in her own name made running a business difficult in some circumstances. She could
not enter into a business partnership after marriage. She could not sue or be sued unless her husband was also a party to the suit; nor could she sign contracts unless he joined her.