Abstract
Recent work on fatherhood in the Victorian period has emphasised its centrality to the concept of masculinity. Being a ‘good man’ meant providing for a family; even more, at least in the respectable classes, a father should help rear his children. Fathers nursed children when they were ill, played with them during holidays, and disciplined them when necessary. Mothers, of course, were central to the home, but fathers remained the ultimate authorities, legally and socially.’ Naturally, this picture is idealised and was more common in the middle classes than those above or below. In particular, working-class fathers were more problematic, for their ability to provide was always contingent, and their time with their children was limited. In addition, physical chastisement for children was ubiquitous in this class; ‘correcting’ children was an essential part of working-class men’s authority in their households. Men who were breadwinners demanded respect; if they did not get it, they might enforce their wishes with violence, against both women and children.2
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J. Tosh (1999), A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 79–101;
L. Davidoff and C. Hall (1987), Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 321–56;
A. J. Hammerton (1992), Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London: Routledge), pp. 73–101.
J. Gillis (1985), For Better, For Worse: British Marriage, 1600 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 248–59;
A. Clark (1995), The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 63–87;
G. Behlmer (1998), Friends of the Family: The English Home and its Guardians, 1850–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 181–229; Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship, pp. 34–67;
E. Ross (1993), Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 84–6;
S. D’Cruze (1998), Crimes of Outrage: Sex, Violence, and the Victorian Working Woman (Dekalb, Illinois: Northen Illinois University Press), pp. 63–80;
S. D’Cruze, (ed.) (2000), Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850–1950: Gender and Class (New York: Longman);
C. Conley (1991), The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Kent (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 68–135; idem (2007), Certain Other Countries: Homicide, Gender, and National Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press), pp. 124–205;
J. C. Wood (2004), Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement (London: Routledge), pp. 61–8.
J. Strange (2007), ‘“Speechless with Grief”: Bereavement and the Working-Class Father, c. 1880–1914’, in T. L. Broughton and H. Rogers (eds) Gender and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 138–49, quote from p. 147;
M. Doolittle (2007), ‘Fatherhood, Religious Belief and the Protection of Children in Nineteenth-Century English Families’, in Broughton and Rogers (eds) Gender and Fatherhood, pp. 31–42, quote from p. 39.
U. Henriques (1967), ‘Bastardy and the New Poor Law’, Past and Present 37, 103–29.
Conley, Certain Other Countries, p. 177. I assembled the cases by looking through three sources and reading both the magistrates’ court and assize court cases: the Lancaster Guardian at five-year intervals from 1850 to 1900; the York Gazette in 1850, 1855, 1865, 1870, 1876, 1882, 1885, 1892, 1895, and 1899; and the months February–March and July–August in the Times in 1858, 1868, 1878, 1888, and 1898. I supplemented the list with cases from compilations like Steve Fielding (1994) The Hangman’s Record, 2 vols (Beckenham, Kent: Chancery House Press). Once I had a list, I read the relevant Home Office, Assize, and Old Bailey Reports at the National Archives in Kew. The numbers of cases per decade are as follows: 7 in the 1850s, 7 in the 1860s, 11 in the 1870s, 13 in the 1880s, 9 in the 1890s, and 4 between 1900 and 1905.
Birmingham Daily Mail, 21 February 1888, p. 3; Times, 22 February 1888, p. 8. For more examples, see K. Watson (2004), Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and Their Victims (London: Hambledon), pp. 78–83; Conley, Certain Other Countries, pp. 177–9.
C. Chapman (1925), The Poor Man’s Court of Justice: Twenty-Five Years as a Metropolitan Magistrate (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd), p. 79; see also Conley, Unwritten Law, pp. 106–10.
Conley, Unwritten Law, pp. 110–12; M. Arnot (2000), ‘Understanding Women Committing Newborn Child Murder in Victorian England’, in D’Cruze (ed.) Everyday Violence in Britain, pp. 55–68; and
M. Arnot (2002), ‘The Murder of Thomas Sandles: Meanings of a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Infanticide’, in M. Jackson (ed.) Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550–2000 (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate), pp. 149–67;
H. Marland (2002), ‘Getting Away with Murder? Puerperal Insanity, Infanticide and the Defence Plea’, in Jackson (ed.) Infanticide, pp. 168–92; and
T. Ward (2002), ‘Legislating for Human Nature: Legal Responses to Infanticide, 1860–1938’, in Jackson (ed.) Infanticide, pp. 249–69.
R. Chadwick (1992), Bureaucratic Mercy: The Home Office and the Treatment of Capital Cases in Victorian Britain (New York: Garland), pp. 310–11; quote from 310.
For instance, Margaret Arnot has discovered that only three women were convicted in Sussex of murdering their children between 1840 and 1880; men who murdered children in this same period had higher rates of both conviction and execution. Arnot, ‘Murder of Thomas Sandles’; see also M. Wiener (2004), Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 123–69; Chadwick, Bureaucratic Mercy, pp. 289–315; and Conley, Certain Other Countries, p. 179.
Wood, Violence and Crime, pp. 47–69; 107–18; see also A. Davis (1998), ‘Youth Gangs, Masculinity and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford’, Journal of Social History 32, pp. 353–6, 360–4; and
C. Emsley (2005), Hard Men: The English and Violence Since 1750 (London: Hambledon), pp. 35–6, 59–69.
Wiener, Men of Blood, 123–239; G. Frost (2008), ‘“He Could Not Hold His Passions”: Domestic Violence and Cohabitation in England, 1850–1900’, Crime, History & Societies 12, pp. 25–44. See also Doolittle, ‘Fatherhood, Religious Belief, and Protection of Children’, p. 31.
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© 2009 Ginger Frost
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Frost, G. (2009). ‘I am master here’: Illegitimacy, Masculinity, and Violence in Victorian England. In: Delap, L., Griffin, B., Wills, A. (eds) The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain since 1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250796_2
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