Breach of Promise to Marry: A History of How Jilted Brides Settled Scores

by Denise Bates

Overview

'The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came but not the bridegroom...'

While Dickens' embittered spinster Miss Havisham stopped all her clocks on her wedding day and 'never since looked upon the light of day', the reality was much brighter for thousands of jilted women. The real Miss Havisham's didn't mope in faded wedding finery – they hired lawyers and struck the first 'no-win, no fee' deals to sue for breach of promise.

From the 1790s right up to the 1960s, jilted women (and sometimes rejected suitors) employed a range of tactics to bring false lovers to book. Denise Bates uncovers over 1,000 forgotten cases of women who found very different endings to their fictional counterparts:

Mary Ann Smith forged evidence of a courtship to entrap an Earl. Catherine Kempsall shot the man who denied their engagement, Gladys Knowles was awarded a record £10,000 in damages by a jury in 1890, Daisy Mons discreetly negotiated a £50,000 settlement from a Lord

Based on original research, this social history of breach of promise shows that when men behaved badly hell had no fury like a woman scorned!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783030361
Publisher:	Pen and Sword
Publication date:	05/03/2014
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Historian and writer Denise Bates used old newspapers extensively when researching her first two books, Pit Lasses and Breach of Promise to Marry and the new information she discovered added greatly to the existing knowledge about both subjects. Historical Research Using British Newspapers draws on her extensive practical experience of using old newspapers as source material.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Discrimination and Diversities: The Development of Breach of Promise 1780-1815 5

2 Artful and Abandoned Hussies: The Heyday of Breach of Promise 1816-1869 19

3 A Substitute for a Shotgun? The Decline of Breach of Promise 1870-1970 35

4 All the World's a Stage: The Legal System and Breach of Promise 49

5 Escaping from the Spider's Web: Defences to Claims for Breach of Promise 67

6 Proverbial for their Extravagance: Damages paid for Breach of Promise 85

7 The Court of Public Opinion: Women who failed with Breach of Promise Claims 103

8 Debt, Despair, Divorce and Death: The Dark Side of Breach of Promise 121

9 The Real Miss Havishams: The Myths and Realities of Breach of Promise 139

10 In Want of a Wife? Breach of Promise Cases pursued by Men 155

Conclusion 169

Appendix 1 Notes for Family Historians 177

Appendix 2 Notes for Researchers 179

Appendix 3 Money Matters 181

Appendix 4 List of Cases 183

Appendix 5 Glossary of Legal Terms 186

Bibliography and Sources 188

Index 190