Now, the subject of this year's
International Women's Day
lecture is Caroline Norton
and on display here
we have two pictures from
the Parliamentary Art Collection.
One is a pen and ink portrait
recently acquired
by the House of Commons Committee
and the other,
a donation to the House of Lords
which they have kindly loaned
to us for this evening's event.
These two pictures are examples
of an ongoing initiative
not only to increase
the representation
of women in the collection
but also to collect images of women
before 1918 who had significant
influence on Parliament and its work.
You'll understand the importance
there that traditionally
the Parliament's art collection
has represented parliamentarians.
But, of course, historically, women
weren't able to be parliamentarians
before 1918 but that doesn't mean
they didn't have any influence
on parliament itself and its work.
Now, Caroline Norton
is an extraordinary example
of how women influence legislation,
despite not having the vote or,
as I said, being able
to participate as parliamentarians.
So, I am absolutely delighted to
introduce our speaker this evening,
Dr Diane Atkinson,
author of this book, 'The Criminal
Conversation of Mrs Norton'.
Diane Atkinson completed
a PhD in the politics
of women's sweated labour.
She taught history before
moving to the Museum of London where
she worked as a lecturer and curator
and she is the author of two
illustrated books, 'Funny Girls:
Cartooning for Equality'
and 'Suffragettes in Pictures'.
Diane has written three biographies
in addition to her biography
of Caroline Norton.
She's also published 'Love & Dirt:
The Marriage of Arthur Munby
and Hannah Cullwick' and
'Elsie & Mairi Go To War:
Two Extraordinary Women
on the Western Front'.
Diane raised funds for a bronze
statue of Elsie Knocker
and Mairi Chisholm which was
unveiled at Ypres in 2014,
and her new book on suffragettes
will be published in 2018.
So we are delighted that she has
agreed to give this year's lecture.
Let me hand over now to Dr Atkinson.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for coming
this evening.
May I introduce you
to this lady who is responsible
for the passing of the first piece
of feminist legislation
in this country.
It's Caroline Norton.
It's a self-portrait, or,
as we would say
in today's parlance, a selfie
and it was made in 1828
and this was one year into
a very unhappy, violent marriage.
On the 17th of August, 1739,
alongside parliamentary
decisions concerning
prisons and prison discipline
in Scotland, police in London
and improving navigation
of the River Shannon in Ireland,
the first piece of feminist
legislation in Britain became law.
The act's four clauses amounted
to less than 400 words
but it changed the legal
status of mothers
with a good reputation forever.
If a wife was legally separated...
(PHONE RINGS IN AUDIENCE)
If a wife was legally separated
or divorced from a husband
and had not been found guilty
of adultery
in a criminal conversation case
or in an ecclesiastical court,
she was now entitled
to have custody
of her children up
to the age of seven
and periodic access thereafter.
In 1836,
the prime minister, Lord Melbourne,
was accused
of having a criminal conversation,
i.e. committing adultery,
with this lady, Caroline Norton.
She was a novelist, poet,
a songwriter
and the wife of George Norton
who was a trained barrister
and a police magistrate.
Lord Melbourne was found not guilty
and George Norton was humiliated
and a laughing stock
in the British press.
The jury had seen the case
for what it was - hurt feelings,
being paraded for political reasons.
Lord Melbourne
was a Whig and the Norton family
were ultra-Tories.
Yes, there were ultra-Tories
and financial gain.
Norton was suing Melbourne
for 1 million pounds in damages.
Of course, Lord Melbourne was guilty
and had been guilty since 1831.
In 1831, George Norton insisted
that Caroline Norton secure a number
of favours for him and his family,
not least his job as a magistrate,
which he was enjoying a nice salary
and very few hours of work.
But Caroline Norton fell in love
with the prime minister and, in
fact, George acted as his wife's
pimp and turned on Lord Melbourne
and his brother, Lord Grantley,
and sued Lord Melbourne
when his brother told him to do so.
Caroline Norton was a great beauty.
She and her sisters
were known as the Three Graces.
Let me introduce you to the masher,
Lord Melbourne,
who was painted
by Sir Edwin Landseer here in 1836.
This was the year of the crim con
case and he'd been Prime Minister
for two years. George's actions
show us that he was really a puppet
of his elder brother, the ultra-Tory
Lord Grantley. He in fact drove
his wife to Lord Melbourne's house.
He turned a blind eye to the fact
that Lord Melbourne spent most
afternoons in his drawing room
with his wife, which was
conveniently close
to Number 10 Downing Street.
A portrait of Lord Melbourne
hung in their drawing room.
And, when Caroline's sisters called
to pay a visit, he had instructed
the servants to send them away
if she was entertaining
the Prime Minister
which she mostly was.
When the not guilty verdict
was given,
Caroline Norton was locked out of
her home, left with only the clothes
she stood up in. George kept all her
manuscripts, her family heirlooms,
all her possessions and, of course,
her three sons. She was denied
access to her sons who were aged
between seven and two and this was
the origins of her campaign
for the Infant Custody Act,
what would become
the Infant Custody Act of 1839.
In the face of this complete,
sort of, destruction of her life
and her reputation,
Caroline responded
by picking up her pen and going to
war with the English legal system.
The previous portrait
was commissioned
by the Duke of Devonshire in 1835
and was by George Hayter.
Now, frustrated by George's refusal
to let her see her sons, she started
her assault on parliament
by writing a pamphlet.
It was rather a long-winded title.
It was 'Observations
on the Natural Claims of a Mother
to the Custody of Her Children
as Affected by the Common
Law Rights of the Father'.
Abraham Hayward, who was a special
pleader with chambers in the temple
canvassed on Caroline's behalf
with the help
of Mr Serjeant Noon Talfourd
to introduce the bill
into the House of Commons
which would give judges
the power to order
that either of the parents should
have access to children under 12.
She didn't know Talfourd personally
but she was aware of how well
he defended Lord Melbourne nine
months earlier in the crim con case.
She said, "I could not choose a man
whose talents and good feeling
and weight with the house would
give a better chance of success."
The first reading
in the House of Commons
was announced
at the end of April, 1837.
Mr Serjeant Talfourd
was indeed a splendid fellow
and the person who Charles Dickens
based his character Tommy Traddles
in the novel 'David Copperfield'.
There had been an awful lot of upset
and worry about the content
of her pamphlet and her publishers
had panicked and dropped it,
so she borrowed the money
to have it printed privately.
She was a great friend
of Mary Shelley
and had shown her first drafts
and, in response to Mary Shelley's
comments, Caroline wrote to her
and said
"I improved the passages
materially by your observations."
Caroline had worried that Mary
would think it was weak
and she would've liked to have
written more hard-hitting prose,
but she was advised
by her sister Georgie
that she should have the appearance
of calmness and fairness
but Caroline did not feel calm.
So, by force of circumstance,
Caroline had transformed
herself from a socialite and a
flibbertigibbet to a campaigner
and an accidental feminist.
Her emotional and intellectual
development had matured
with a sharper feminist focus.
Her remarks to Mary Shelley,
who was of course the daughter
of Mary Wollstonecraft reveal a
woman whose personal experiences had
brought her to a clear understanding
of the invidious position of
women and their unequal rights.
She wrote to Mary
"Does it not provoke
you sometimes to think how in vain
the gift of genius is for a woman?
How so far from biding her
to her fellow creatures,
it does, in effect, create that
gulf cross which no-one passes."
Caroline's brother, Brinsley
Sheridan, who was paying her
lawyer's fees and living expenses,
worried about the indelicacy of her
appeal to the public
by writing a pamphlet.
He fretted that, no matter how
carefully she worded her remarks
about him, George Norton would
take it badly and of course he did.
"I dread, I really dread it drawing
forth a counter-statement from Mr
Norton and that he would print his
own pamphlet, not to contradict her
but to make a series of accusations,
true or false it matters not,
that must injure you and make
your position more disagreeable
than it is even at present."
Brinsley Sheridan knew that
Caroline's flightiness in the past
could alienate the conservative
newspaper-reading public
but she was sure that George Norton
was universally despised
and that no-one would take
his counterattack seriously.
However, her brother
was more worldly and he
knew very well how negatively
she was held in certain circles.
The first reading, remember, is due
in April 1837.
It was on the 30th of March, George
took advertising space in several
newspapers denouncing his wife,
and, of course, Brinsley Sheridan,
as the elder man in the family,
their father had died
years beforehand, had to respond.
George had broken
the rules of polite society
and gone public with their troubles.
Brinsley felt he had no choice
but to refute the lies that
George was peddling and to defend
his sister's battered reputation.
He denied that Caroline
had voluntarily left home
and said that George Norton's
previous conduct to Caroline
and her family had been obnoxious.
Meanwhile, Caroline was waiting
anxiously for responses to her
pamphlet and for Serjeant Talfourd
to introduce
the infant custody bill.
It was read for the first time
in the House of Commons on the 20th
of April 1837 and the second reading
was scheduled
for the 24th of May.
But there was a lot
of strange behaviour
coming in her direction
from George Norton and his family.
Suddenly he was writing to
her in quite reasonable terms
which was a novelty and she was very
suspicious of his motives and about
his offer of a reconciliation.
On the 23rd of May, the day
before the bill was due to
be read for a second time,
George came back to London
from their country home in Surrey
and he asked Caroline
to visit him in
their family house in Knightsbridge.
The upshot of that was
that, on the 24th of May,
Mr Serjeant Talfourd
announced he was postponing
the second reading for two weeks
and it would now take place
on the 7th of June.
This was to do with what were called
the Norton Negotiations
and Caroline's painful separation
of her children
had been the catalysts
for the framing of this bill.
And Talfourd really needed her
to be advising him from the wings
on the way forward
and the content of the bill.
He was going to put
it to parliament.
He was going to talk
it through parliament.
He was hoping to get it passed.
But he needed her
personal experience and needed
a great deal of the research that
she conducted on her own behalf
to actually speak and debate
on this bill with authority.
And, until she was fully focused,
he was not able to do that
and that's why there
was this two-week delay.
And it was very hard for her to
focus on this because George
was always dangling the possibility
of her seeing her children.
And she spent far too much
time analysing his letters
and writing back to him.
On the 29th of May, George offered
her a reconciliation, another chance
to make their marriage work.
He insisted that she give up
all power to him and his brother.
He wrote very sanctimoniously, which
was veiled with serious menace,
that, if amicable arrangements did
not take place, hostile proceedings
would go forward.
He offered her two possibilities,
that she was restored to him
and the children and his society
or she was restored
to the children only.
The first option meant
that she had to live a life
which reversed the past.
She'd have to change her ways
and mind her words
and her behaviour.
And she suggested, and George
suggested, if she preferred to just
have the children only, she would
have to see his brother and promise
to entrust him with all
the arrangements that George would
pursue and insist on
for her to see the children.
Norton said, as soon as these
decisions were made,
she could go and see the children.
By this time, they were in
Scotland because their eldest child,
who is eight at this time,
was in the pre-tubercular phase.
He was a very frail child,
later on became consumptive,
so he'd been taken from London
to Scotland for the cleaner air.
George hoped that her
love of the children
and contrition about the past
would enable her to compromise.
Caroline replied immediately.
She'd kept all the family informed
of developments and she made it
clear to George that she had a team
of people behind her, she wasn't
working on her own, and one of
her team was her brother Brinsley.
She knew how poisonous relations
were between her brother
and George Norton and this
was the first time that she'd
actually mentioned his name.
The presence, the mention, of her
brother in her letter had clearly
upset George and his tactics
really became very,
very menacing indeed.
His strategy was always to seem
to be reasonable and apparently see
things from her point of view but,
in the end, to lay down his wishes
in the most unflinching terms.
He insisted that she exclude
Brinsley from the negotiations
and, of course, she refused.
Shortly before the 7th of June,
when the bill was to be
read for a second time,
Talfourd was forced to
postpone the bill for
another two weeks, again compromised
between the toing and the froing
between George Norton, his brother,
Lord Grantley and Caroline Norton.
It would be easy for us to say she
should've ignored these letters
but the fact she hadn't seen her
children for 18 months
at this point meant
she was very conflicted
and her attention was completely
distracted by these spurious offers,
in the end they were spurious
offers, that George was making,
and, of course, her attention
was not fully focused on the bill.
She threatened to make
all his letters public
and he counter-threatened
to publish his own account
of the breakdown of their marriage.
He said, if they did not settle
the affairs, the reconciliation
or access to the children,
there would be what were
called revolting exposures.
He would authorise an advertisement
in the newspapers about her and he
and his lawyers would do everything
in their power to make sure she
never saw her children ever again.
On the 9th of June, 11 days before
Talfourd's bill was due to be read,
Caroline still had hopes
of seeing the children and kept
communications open with George.
Of course, in the end,
George Norton's manipulations
and machinations worked
and, on the 20th of June,
Talfourd, sort of, frustrated
by this stuff going on
in the background,
withdrew the infant
custody bill for that parliamentary
session and announced it
would start again in 1838.
Now, there's a strange period when
she was allowed to see her children
and they were allowed to visit her
from their place in London.
And, on one particular day,
Brinsley was very unwell.
That was the middle child.
And his father was away and he
begged his mother to let him stay
with her for that evening.
And she wanted him to stay but she
was so afraid of George and what he
and his brother would do,
she sent him back in a carriage
to their London home.
She took them and she was soothing
her little boy
outside on the doorstep
when suddenly the door opened
and George's very cross
and not very nice sister, Caroline,
came to the door, insulted her
and shouted at the little boy.
Caroline lost her temper
and it was a very unseemly moment.
The next day, Caroline sent
a carriage for her children,
hoping it would be returned with
the boys inside but it was returned
empty and she was told the boys
would not be coming anymore.
After the scene at the door,
his sister had summoned
George, her husband, from
Guildford, their country house,
and he was there when Caroline
went round to see what was going on.
She tried to push
her way into the house
but was kept out by George, was
pushed out by George and his sister,
and she came away much bruised.
Caroline next heard that the boys
had been taken to the country
house in Surrey, in Guildford.
She sent a letter to their
nurse maid, asking after them,
and it was sent back to her by
George's brother with no reply.
So, she went out to Guildford
to see what was going on and to
see the situation for herself.
When she arrived there,
fortunately Lord Grantley was out
and she somehow managed to get into
the nursery and she was sitting with
her son on her knee when Lord
Grantley marched back into the room
and ordered her out of his house.
"He pulled and shook
me fiercely by the arm.
I said I would indict
him for assault if
he was so violent with me.
He let me go
but called the servants
and he and the butler took hold of
the sick boy by his arms and legs.
My arm was around him and I was
afraid they would break his limbs.
I made no struggle on that account
and let them do what they would
and the children were
taken away screaming.
Grantley ordered the servants to
lock the children up and Caroline
was thrown out of the house.
She returned to London
and was confined to bed
for much of the rest of the summer.
All direct contact between
Mr and Mrs Norton was ended
and George's legal team was
threatening to take an advertisement
about their affairs and go public.
Norton and his brother
had won this first round.
Their behaviour was so... Their
behaviour ensured that the situation
was so frenetic and unstable that
her focus on the infant custody bill
was completely lost.
In 1838, she had to start
pamphleteering all over again
and a new pamphlet she
wrote for Serjeant's bill
was called 'The Separation...'
Sorry, Serjeant Talfourd's bill.
It was called 'The Separation
of Mother and Child by the Law
of Custody of Infants Considered'.
She published it anonymously,
although many guessed
she was the author.
The content of her pamphlet
was as sharp and as clearly
cut as a diamond,
although she fretted it might
be too earnest and too womanish.
It was eloquent, it was indignant
and pithy and unpicked the injustice
of a mother's position
when a marriage broke down.
The law was made by men for men
and women were at
the mercy of its power.
Her pamphlet was written from
the head and the heart
and only someone who had suffered
as much as she had could've written
such a fine piece of polemic.
She pointed out that,
as the law stood,
it recognised that the father,
however inappropriate and immoral
his behaviour, had sole right to
the custody of his children,
whereas the mother did not.
Caroline's pamphlet aimed to educate
and raise consciousness about
the injustice of the law.
Many people assumed that,
on the breakdown of a marriage,
a mother had custody of her children
until they were seven years old
but this was not the case.
Due to the curious anomaly
in the law, the mother of an
illegitimate child did have custody,
presumably because of the likelihood
of the absent father being
a deserter
or perhaps a married man.
But, from the moment of birth,
children born into marriage
were the father's.
A mother could make no claim
for custody, as the wife had
no separate legal existence.
Caroline's pamphlet
went on to point out
that a father who was legally
separated from his wife could
deny the mother access to her child.
Only he had any say on the way
the children were brought up.
He could appoint whoever he
liked to look after the children.
If the mother refused
to hand them over, he could
physically seize them.
And a mother might have to hand
over her children to be brought
up by a woman with whom her husband,
her estranged husband,
had committed adultery.
In Caroline Norton's view,
the law was despotic on one hand
and impotent on the other.
She described how the law had
surrendered its responsibility
to the husband in a rocky marriage
by giving him the incompatible roles
of accused and judge,
which was a blatantly
unreasonable situation because
he was the one man in the world who
was least likely to be able to judge
his wife with the smallest particle
of fairness or temperate feeling.
He is the man to whom the real
judges of land yield their right
of protection.
Caroline underlined the hypocrisy of
her country in a legislature which
paraded its loathing of oppression,
where a master could be charged with
assault if he struck a servant
and that violence and offensive
language were punished.
"It's a strange and crying
shame that the only despotic right
an Englishman possesses is to
wrong the mother of his children."
George's name wasn't mentioned in
this pamphlet but the details of
the criminal conversation trial were
still fresh in many people's minds.
It had been such
a scandal at that time.
Readers knew that he hovered
over every page and that
Caroline's experience of his fickle
and tyrannical behaviour informed
her rhetoric from beginning to end.
If George had read the pamphlet,
which he probably did, he would've
seethed to see his shabby behaviour
exposed to underpin the legal demand
for change, which, if successful,
would've constituted another defeat
for him.
Not everyone was happy
in Caroline's family
about what she was trying to do.
Her uncle, Sir James
Graham, was the most senior
member of the family, was a firm
believer in the law as it stood.
And Caroline found it astonishing
how even kind and good men narrowed
their minds on this subject.
It was a curious position for
a man to adopt who knew all about
the dark side of her marriage.
But Caroline
carried on lobbying politicians
whom she hoped would support...
Caroline carried on lobbying
politicians whom she hoped would
support Talfourd's bill
at her home in Mayfair.
It was a dispiriting battle.
"No-one knows
and no-one cares, that's a fact.
It's an unheard lamenting
and uneven struggle.
The woman drops out of her place
in society and happiness at home,
as the leaf drifts from the tree
to the ground and no sound echoes it
and no eye follows it."
The second reading of Talfourd's
bill took place on May the 28th.
The speeches against it exposed male
prejudice about women who kicked
against bad marriages.
It was a widespread assumption that
all women unhappy with their
husbands were committing adultery.
That was the only reason.
And a fear that, if the bill
became law, it'd be impossible
to prevent unchaste women from
getting access to their children.
A blind eye was very conveniently
turned to the fact that,
under the law, an adulterous father
could take his children
from an innocent, faithful wife
and hand them over to his mistress.
A recurring theme
with those who spoke against
the bill was the idea that, if any
concessions were made, they would
lead to the most dreadful changes,
that once were faithful and devoted
wives and mothers could become
a dangerous menace to society.
However, amazingly, in a low turnout
of its 685 members, the bill
passed its second reading
by 91 votes voted for it
and 17 against
and it was sent to the Lords
for debate at the end of July.
Before the bill was debated,
Caroline wrote dozens of letters
to the lords and peers
who she thought would be sympathetic
to the principles of the bill.
However, the Nortons had a very
valuable ally in the House of Lords.
He was a real political ally and he
was a family friend, Lord Wynford,
who was William Draper Best.
He'd been a key member
of George's legal team
in the crim con case in 1836.
Lord Wynford produced his
own pamphlet and he said it
was nothing more than a vendetta by
Caroline and mentioned her by name.
Caroline had gone to
considerable trouble to keep
herself out of the newspapers in
the weeks leading up to the debate
but Wynford's pamphlet
was a blatant attempt
to smear the motives of the bill.
When it was debated in the House
of Lords, nine peers voted for it
but 11 against.
And even her great friend, Lord
Broome, spoke at length against it.
It was a disappointment for Caroline
to hear the arguments he used.
He said it would open the doors to
such frightful changes in the whole
of this country
and the whole of the principles
on which the law of husband
and wife was founded.
His most extravagant remarks came
in his final objection to the bill.
"If there's one thing which, more
than another, tended to protect
the sanctity of the marriage vow,
it was the love and affection which
women bore to their children.
What could have
a more powerful tendency
to make a wife faithful
than the knowledge that infidelity
on her part would sever her
connection with her offspring?
But would not the salutary influence
against criminality be removed,
for the wife should be told that,
by the short-sighted and one-sided
humanity of their lords, she might,
when living apart from her husband,
obtain access to her children."
Broome's fears that the bill was a
veiled attack on the institution of
marriage and patriarchal values on
which society had been constructed
were widely shared
by the House of Lords.
Lord Wynford spoke when Broome had
finished. He blustered that the bill
could only do a great deal of evil
and produce no good.
It would inflict hardships on
husbands and families would be
ruined by the cost of litigation
and that fathers' lawful and natural
duty to educate his children
would be undermined.
Wynford questioned
how a father's duties
could be performed satisfactorily
if his efforts were neutralised
and counteracted
by the influence of the wife.
As well as encouraging adultery,
the morals of the younger generation
would also be corrupted.
Yet when Lord Wynford died in 1845,
his obituary remarked of him
"He was described
as a man of pleasure,
whose devotion to the opposite sex
amounted to a controlling passion".
No surprises there.
As well as everything else that's
going on in her life, Caroline had
to deal with a great deal of flak
that was flying around
in the Tory press.
There was a periodical called
'The British and Foreign Review'
and, hiding behind anonymity,
several of her enemies called
Caroline a renowned...
It's a difficult word to say, this.
Agitatress.
And she'd written this pamphlet
all about sexual equality,
that's all she wanted.
She denied. Caroline came on
the attack again and she denied
she was a feminist or an advocate
of full legal rights for women.
And the following sentence
I'm going to quote is often
used to describe her
fickleness, really, but I think
people mistake this sentence.
I think she was being ironic,
so I'll let you judge for yourself.
This is Caroline.
Remember all the stuff
I've said before.
"I believe the beauty and devotion
of a woman's character
may need to depend
on the consciousness
of her inferiority to man
and that the greatest suffering
that a right-minded
and pure-hearted woman can feel
is being unable to respect,
look up to her husband."
You decide.
There was all sorts of other smear
campaigns flying around in the same
journal week after week.
She was outraged by the offensive
innuendo that she and Talfourd
were lovers, that he had
only become involved
with the issue because
of their sexual intimacy.
She insisted her interest
in the bill was not contingent
on her own misfortunes
and it would not end with them.
She had always believed that it was
a gross injustice for a mother to be
denied access to a sick
and dying child.
Caroline had correctly anticipated
the reactions to her answering
this article.
She'd be criticised for seeking
publicity but, if she ignored it,
people would think it was true.
She looked into the possibility of
suing the Tory periodical but she
learned that a woman was not allowed
to sue for libel in her own name
because such a case would have to
be brought by a husband.
Caroline had been bruised by
the defeat of the custody bill
in the Lords and was ready to start
again, amazingly, and she started
writing a new pamphlet at the end of
1839, ready to relaunch a new attack
for the bill in 1839.
This third pamphlet was called
'A Plain Letter
to the Lord Chancellor
on the Infant Custody Bill'
and she wrote it under the pseudonym
of Pearce Stevenson Esquire.
It's interesting because The Times
devoted two columns on this pamphlet
in January 1839.
It said it didn't wish to open a
controversy on this complicated
subject but it referred to
the arguments of a measure,
also in brief, but it extracted,
and this is really important,
it extracted a sizeable chunk of
the narrative from the pamphlet
concerning the true story of
the background of Mrs Norton's case.
It contrasted the good luck of
the defendant, Lord Melbourne, in
1836, with the unfortunate
condition of the lady.
If the verdict meant anything,
it was equally acquitted.
For the first time, Caroline
Norton's story was being told
in the press and it was a shock.
The details of her efforts
to see her children and her
husband's recalcitrance
were now on public view.
And they were material in improving
the chances, materially helpful, in
improving the chances of the success
of the infant custody bill.
Caroline also lobbied
publisher John Murray,
asking him to speak up
for her and her cause.
She was nervous about
the forthcoming parliamentary
session and she told him she
had all the help she could get.
"It is so easy to crush a woman,
especially one whose reputation
has already been slandered.
I entreat you to use your influence
to prevent my name, which has grown
to be the watch-word for insult
and cruel abuse,
from being anymore alluded to."
Caroline was smarting and livid
at having been recently described as
something between a barn actress
and Mary Wollstonecraft. The man
who made this bizarre comment was
a man called John Mitchell Kemble,
who is a brother of her
friend, Fanny Kemble.
He was a precociously clever
man and he's one of these guys
who couldn't work out whether
he was going to be a barrister
or a politician or a clergyman
or a mathematician, any one of those
three. And it's odd that he turned
on her and persecuted her 'cause she
was a close friend of his sister.
So, Caroline was also suffering a
personal attack on her integrity
from certain quarters
and also people were attacking
her to get at Lord Melbourne.
In March 1839, Caroline had to put
all her focus on Serjeant Talfourd's
third attempt to get the infant
custody bill onto the statute book.
Well, here we go again.
There's another offer from George
to allow her to see the children
and a pattern obviously has emerged
ahead of this issue being
discussed in parliament.
There'd been notes and letters
and there'd been tears and tantrums
and protestations on his part.
Meetings would take place
and possible access to her
three little boys would be dangled.
George would agree to pay her
debts which he was liable for.
The intention was...
There was never any intention
to let her see the children.
The intention was to upset her
and distract from parliament
and working with Talfourd
on the bill.
In the spring of 1839, a man called
Nathaniel Ogle, who was a barrister,
was hired by Brinsley Sheridan
to help Caroline wrestle with George
and his family and help her with
the infant custody bill.
He was a kind and generous friend
and she briefed him all the way
from her drawing room in Mayfair.
She sent him sheathes of notes
and previously unknown details
of George's behaviour,
his attempt to borrow
1,500 pounds at the time,
about half a million pounds
in today's money,
prior to suing Lord
Melbourne for criminal conversation.
So, in a way, he was blackmailing
Lord Melbourne and asking for this
vast loan and Lord Melbourne
refused and that's how one
of the factors around
the criminal conversation case.
An unnamed witness
gave sworn evidence
to George's lies
and cheating behaviour
and there was also mention
of him having a mistress too.
And his behaviour as his wife's pimp
was also detailed.
And all these details were
then passed onto Nathaniel Ogle.
Caroline had a really high opinion
of Ogle's work on the act and she
called him the genie in the bottle.
She advised Ogle
from her drawing room
and who to lobby
and how to lobby for the bill,
always asking him
to burn her letters.
Nathaniel Ogle's efforts
succeeded and, in April,
sorry, in April and July 1839,
the infant custody bill was read,
debated, sniped at by the old guard
and amazingly passed into law.
Hooray.
On the 17th of August,
it went onto the statute book
and at last Caroline's work
was done.
But that was by no means the end
of the story and the end of work
for her and it was certainly not
a means by which she could see her
three sons because George Norton
took them to Scotland and the law
didn't apply to Scotland.
She wasn't surprised.
Other mothers benefitted
from the change to the law,
what she had worked so hard for,
and she was happy about that.
In fact, Caroline Norton wouldn't
see her sons again until 1842,
so that's six years, really,
from the crim con case.
And then
only two of them were alive.
Her youngest child, Charles,
aged nine, died of neglect.
That's exactly what he died of.
In fact, it was tetanus
but it was neglect.
He'd had a riding accident
and his arm wasn't properly bathed.
There was nobody really looking
after the children properly.
It was a terrible situation.
She was summoned to his death bed
but arrived too late.
From that moment on,
even George Norton would not deny
her access to her two surviving sons
but it was always on his conniving
and cavilling terms.
Emboldened by her success in 1839,
and frustrated at being able to get
away from this marriage,
she couldn't divorce on him on
a legal technicality, so she worked
so hard to separate herself from him
but that was, again, another battle
which she would have to get in
the ring and fight almost like in a
bare-knuckle situation with George,
unable to get away from him
to get legally separated
for another ten years.
The only way Caroline could
escape from this marriage was if
George Norton died before her
and he wouldn't die,
he just wouldn't die.
In fact, he didn't die until 1875.
But, of course, that didn't stop
her campaigning on any other matters
which were of direct relevance
to her and to the wider
female community. So what did she
do?
She picked up her pen
and she went to war
against the legal system
and she was very centrally involved
in a number of clauses of the 1857
Matrimonial Causes Act, which made
divorce easier, slightly,
to acquire and it took
divorce away from the church
and into the civil courts.
And her pamphleteering and research
and lobbying also materially
influenced the Married Women's
Property Act of 1870. Thank you.
