The snowstorm that contributed to Devonworth’s need for a wife was inspired by a real snowstorm, which swept through Exmoor in the southwest of England on the evening of March 28, 1878. The severe weather was unexpected after a mild winter. Accounts of the storm record one shepherd losing over two hundred and sixty sheep. The event was noteworthy enough to get a mention in Symons’s British Rainfall, one of the first published annual guides that recorded weather for the United Kingdom.
The bill that Devonworth is trying to pass in the book is a combination of the Public Health Act of 1875 and the water addendum to that act of 1878. The acts were essentially a consolidation of all the other public health acts that had been implemented throughout the nineteenth century. This century saw drastic changes in the way people lived in Great Britain. At the start of the nineteenth century, most of the population was rural and lived in farming communities. By the middle of the century, people had begun to move to towns and cities in pursuit of jobs, which resulted in over half of the population living in urban centers. As you can imagine, this population shift created unsanitary conditions and health hazards that local governments were slow to address.
Terraced homes were built to accommodate the people who moved into the cities to work in factories and industry, but very little consideration was given to the additional waste and water and food needs of these people. There were still open sewers in many cities and little to no regulations on waste removal or safe food and drinking water. There are reports of rubbish heaps as tall as buildings. As a result, cholera and typhoid were common and devastating diseases that killed many people. This was made all the more devastating because these diseases were and are largely preventable.
Smaller acts were created throughout the decades to address the rapidly changing needs of the growing urban population, but they were piecemeal and more like a bandage to the bigger problem. The 1875 act was the result of a concerted effort by various groups to address the needs of the population. It stated that local authorities were responsible for providing access to clean water, ensuring that safe food was available, and disposing of all sewage. It also required all new houses and dwellings to be connected to the main sewer lines. The Public Health (Water) Act of 1878 went a step further and stated that all sewers should be covered and that every dwelling should have access to clean water. It established distance requirements for water access and created local authorities to enforce them, and also expanded the reach of the act to rural areas, rather than only larger cities.
As you might expect, there had been quite a bit of resistance to these changes, primarily due to the cost involved in creating efficient sewers and upkeep on old sewer systems, along with plumbing each residence with running water. It not only increased local tax rates but shifted the cost of implementing initiatives to landlords and homeowners. These same landlords and homeowners spent a lot of money lobbying to keep the acts from passing. Even when Dr. John Snow proved the physical link between cholera and water sources in the 1850s, and Louis Pasteur scientifically proved that germs, not miasma, caused sickness, people in power were resistant to change laws because of the expense. Because it wasn’t convenient to believe, it wasn’t until the 1880s and 1890s that the majority began to accept that it was germs and not unpleasant smells and vapors that caused disease, despite decades of proof.
The letter that Bolingrave wrote to the newspaper is based on a paper written by Dr. Benjamin Richardson, a colleague and friend of Dr. Snow. Dr. Richardson presented his paper to the Congress of Sanitarians in Exeter in September of 1880. In the presentation he offers the unfortunate, but typical, argument of many educated and accomplished men and women of the time that women should be allowed an education but only in the sense that it would make them better homemakers and caretakers to their families. These people believed that women wouldn’t have anything of value to offer society outside the home. They often argued that educating women would result only in women taking jobs away from men who needed them.
Married women in Britain at this time lived under what was known as coverture. This means a woman was considered to be under her husband’s protection and was his property. In essence, when a man and woman married, they became one under the law. What was hers became his, and she ceased to exist as her own person. Women’s rights activists fought to change this. They believed that married women and unmarried women should enjoy the same rights. Thanks to their efforts, the first Married Women’s Property Act was passed in 1870, but it was a watered-down version of what had initially been proposed. It gave women rights to some of their income, investments, property, and children, but only up to a certain threshold. Obviously, this was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough.
Cora and the women’s rights group she joins rightfully believe that expanding the rights of married women was an important step on the road to full equality for women under the law. It took over a decade, but the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 finally passed. This act gave married women their own legal identity. They were able to sign contracts; own, sell, and buy property; and keep inheritances without limit. While it did not make women equal to men in the eyes of the law, it was a crucial step in securing a woman’s legal identity.