Book description
Westminster, London, 22 June 1836. It is a fine, fresh morning that
will become hot as the day progresses. Crowds are gathering at the
Court of Common Pleas.
On trial is Caroline Sheridan, a beautiful and clever young woman
who had been manoeuvred into marrying the Honourable George Norton
when she was just nineteen. Ten years older, he is a dull, violent and
controlling lawyer but Caroline is determined not to be a traditional
wife. By her early twenties, Caroline has become a respected poet and
songwriter, clever mimic and outrageous flirt. Her beauty and wit
attract many male admirers, including the Prime Minister, Lord
Melbourne. After years of simmering jealousy, Norton accuses Caroline
and the Prime Minister of a 'criminal conversation' (adultery)
precipitating 'the scandal of the century'. In Westminster Hall that
day is a young Charles Dickens, who would, just a few months later,
fictionalise the event as 'Bardell v. Pickwick' in The Pickwick
Papers. After a trial lasting twelve hours, the jury's not guilty
verdict is immediate, unanimous and sensational. Norton is a laughing
stock. Angry and humiliated he cuts Caroline off, as was his right
under the law, refuses to let her see their three sons, seizes her
manuscripts and letters, her clothes and jewels, and leaves her
destitute.
The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton is the extraordinary
story of one woman's fight for the rights of women everywhere. For the
next thirty years Caroline campaigned for women and battled
male-dominated Victorian society, helping to write the Infant Custody
Act (1839), and influenced the Matrimonial Causes (Divorce) Act (1857)
and the Married Women's Property Act (1870), which gave women a
separate legal identity for the first time.
Diane Atkinson was born in the North-East and educated in Cornwall
and London, where she completed a PhD on the politics of women's sweated
labour. At the Museum of London she worked as a lecturer and curator
specializing in women's history. She has an MA from the University of
East Anglia in Life-writing. She is the author of
Suffragettes in Pictures,
Funny Girls: Cartooning for Equality,
Love and Dirt: The Marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick,
and
Elsie and Mairi Go To War
, published in 2009.
