‘They lived together as man and wife’: Plebeian cohabitation, illegitimacy, and broken relationships in London, 1700–1840

Abstract

In the early 1740s John Bell, a brewer, rented a house worth £20 a year in the parish of St Ann Blackfriars where he ‘lived and cohabited together with the said Sarah Bell [alias Morgan] as man and wife’.¹ They had a child, also called John Bell. William Dyos, a painter, was a relation of Sarah’s. He lodged with them and was given the honour of being the child’s godfather. He told the petty sessions that he ‘cannot say that the said Sarah Bell, alias Morgan, was ever married to the said John Bell, though she went always by his name and was reputed to be his wife.’² When both John Bell and Sarah Morgan died, their son John, aged two, came to the attention of the parochial authorities, triggering a settlement examination. There is evidence here of what appears to be a successful cohabiting relationship that only came to an end (and the details before the Justices of the Peace) with the untimely death of both parents.