Chapter 4

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE THE LEGAL SYSTEM AND BREACH OF PROMISE

“They said what a wery gen’rous thing it was o’ them to have taken the case ‘on spec’, and to charge nothin’ at all for costs, unless they got ‘em out of Mr Pickwick”.

(Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837)

Although nineteenth century men saw themselves as the stronger sex, when it came to a breach of promise claim, gender assumptions were often reversed. Most men preferred to avoid the court room and those who wished to extricate themselves from an engagement were usually prepared to agree a private arrangement. This was cheaper, more discreet and would not expose a man as a dishonourable cad who had forced his former fiancée to bring a public claim for recompense. It is probable that there was always a dubious aspect to any claims heard in court, which would account for the distasteful connotations surrounding breach of promise from an early stage.

Information about settlements negotiated out-of-court is scarce because they were not in the public domain, but what does exist suggests that women could obtain handsome payments. It is likely that some well-bred ladies had their damages decided in court solely because they, or their families, had made unrealistic demands for compensation, rather than because a wealthy man had refused to do the decent thing. In 1825, defendant George Horton publicly criticised the family of 19-year-old Margaret Capper for dragging her name into court, rather than settling. The damages of £1,000 that the jury awarded to Margaret may have been lower than the offer her family had rejected, as Horton’s fortune was around £24,000.

Breach of promise claims were brought, nominally, by the person who had been jilted. If the plaintiff was under 21, a parent or guardian had to bring the claim on their behalf and the young woman probably enjoyed little, if any, influence over decisions taken in her name. Plaintiffs who were old enough to sue in court may have been firmly steered by senior relatives and allowed no unfettered choice over the course taken.

Before a claim arrived in court it had passed through several informal stages. The first of these was taking legal advice, and by 1820 there was no shortage of eager solicitors (known as attorneys at this time), to smooth a woman’s path into the courtroom. Small towns had at least one solicitor and he was usually willing to offer a brief consultation and scrutinise letters for evidence of a promise of marriage. Respectable solicitors made their living from identifying laws that had been broken and then facilitating a claim for damages. Others were more pro-active in attracting business, and provided women with safe storage facilities for compromising letters until news arrived that a deserting fiancé had married someone else. A few used pushy and aggressive tactics, and one London firm of solicitors appears to have employed private detectives to locate missing fiancés.

Access to the courts was not free and a woman could only bring a claim if she could pay her legal bills. These varied according to the circumstances of the breach, how much time was spent trying to resolve the claim privately and the fees charged by her advisors. Legal costs are shrouded in secrecy as very few cases provide details about the fees incurred. Middle-class ladies with money at their disposal engaged solicitors with a sound reputation, and sometimes retained a barrister to help with any negotiations. Their legal bills could amount to hundreds of pounds. Poor women with no savings were obliged to find a cheap solicitor, and try to persuade a friend or relative to loan money or stand as a guarantor for the legal costs.

The high success rate of women in breach of promise cases led to some solicitors covertly offering what are now termed no-win-no-fee deals, known at the time as taking a case ‘on spec’. Direct evidence of the practice dates from 1850, when a solicitor named Webber sued John Symes and his new wife, Matilda, for the balance of the costs she had incurred in a breach of promise case against another man two years earlier. She won, but received just a farthing in damages and was refused her legal costs, leaving Webber £81 out-of-pocket on his gamble. He remained out-of-pocket, as the judge ruled that he had offered his services on a ‘no-cure-no-pay’ basis and had no claim against his former client.

Conditional fees were on the margins of legality in the nineteenth century and were offered at the lawyer’s discretion when a woman with a strong case could not afford to take it to court, depriving the lawyer of the money he could earn for helping with her claim. As the person who lost a court case was usually ordered to pay the legal costs incurred by the winner, the solicitor advising a successful woman would obtain his payment from the defendant, not from his client.

Several cases brought by poor women indicate that the solicitor collected an up-front deposit of around £20 from the plaintiff before beginning any work on the claim. This would cover the costs of correspondence with the defendant and court fees, and probably placed the solicitor’s services on the correct side of legality. A very small number of solicitors may have strayed into an illegal arrangement known as champerty; claiming a fee and a proportion of the damages recovered.

Not all women were offered a no-win-no-fee arrangement. Fee-chasing solicitors were not interested in justice but in claims that did not expose them to risk; taking up cases where they could guarantee victory for the plaintiff, by proving that a promise had been made and broken. This explains why more than a third of all claims for breach of promise were not made until the defendant had married someone else or had written to the woman to break the engagement, as this made the broken promise impossible to deny, leaving the amount of damages the only question for the jury to decide.

To obtain a fee, unprincipled solicitors encouraged women to bring very dubious claims, holding out the unrealistic prospect of winning £100 or more, even when it must have been obvious that the woman would receive derisory damages and be exposed to public ridicule in the process. Several cases disparaged in court as ‘attorney’s actions’ garnered only a few pounds in compensation, as juries chivalrously awarded the woman just enough money to ensure that she would not be ordered to pay the defendant’s legal costs or be harassed to pay her own.

Although some no-win-no-fee cases show a sordid side to breach of promise claims, they also provided poor women with access to the law. Knowing that some solicitors would take a claim ‘on spec’ may have made men think twice about a proposal they had no intention of honouring and probably induced men who had changed their minds to offer realistic out-of-court settlements. Convincing a solicitor of the strength of her case was perhaps the hardest hurdle a poor woman had to clear, as a solicitor would only begin work on a case when he was satisfied that either the plaintiff or the defendant would be paying his bills.

The opening gambit in a breach of promise claim was a letter to the defendant, pointing out that he had failed to meet his obligations to his fiancée and enquiring what compensation he was prepared to pay her to avoid the unpleasantness of a claim for breach of promise. At this point the defendant usually hurried to a solicitor of his own, but some, whether out of inertia or because they considered the claim was an idle threat, ignored all communication until court action was imminent. If the defendant retained a solicitor, then letters flew between both lawyers, ranging from an instantaneous rebuttal of the claim to an offer to negotiate mutually acceptable compensation.

There are no records of how many claims were compromised and how many were abandoned at this stage, but any claim that could be defended would be rooted out aggressively by the plaintiff’s solicitor if he had offered a ‘no-cure-no-pay’ deal. A solicitor would decide whether to help a woman with a weak claim negotiate a settlement, or wash his hands of her, based on what he could obtain for himself. This probably accounts for the very high success rate of breach of promise plaintiffs as it prevented weak or frivolous cases reaching court. Women who could not afford legal fees had no autonomy over how their claims were treated.

If a valid claim existed, settling it informally was an exercise in brinkmanship for both sides. Defendants had to consider the cost of two sets of legal fees in addition to damages when deciding whether to settle. Plaintiffs had to weigh up whether to accept a lower offer than they were dreaming of or to gamble that the jury would be generous. Unless the proof of a promise was incontrovertible and the woman had sustained real harm from it being broken, there was always the chance that a jury would be unsympathetic. Occasionally, the amount the plaintiff had refused was mentioned in court. Most juries matched or bettered this offer, but some did not. In 1874, Susan Tredwell refused an annuity of £50 and obtained £300, rather than the £1,300 she stated as her loss. Minnie Sewell, who turned down £500 in 1900, was awarded only £300 by the jury.

If no settlement could be reached informally, the plaintiff’s solicitor drew up the paperwork and began court proceedings. The Royal Courts of Justice were based in London and all legal cases were started in one of its four divisions. There were no rules about which division dealt with a breach of promise claim and solicitors used their personal preference. Most claims began in either the Court of the King’s (or Queen’s) Bench, or the Court of Common Pleas, but a few were taken to the Court of Exchequer which dealt with financial matters. As part of a series of wide-ranging reforms, the divisions of Common Pleas and Exchequer were abolished in 1880 and all breach of promise claims were considered by the Court of the Queen’s Bench. Scotland had its own legal system which dealt with claims stated there.

Geography determined where a claim was heard. Those relating to London were usually heard in the Courts of Justice, while cases which originated in other areas were heard by the next Assize Court. Plaintiffs could determine where their case was heard and some ensured that their case was heard in London; a practice that might raise questions about why they were avoiding a local hearing. Sinister motives were often imputed to plaintiffs, but some may have simply preferred not to wash dirty linen in front of leering acquaintances. A surprising number of couples had met whilst both were away from home, working or visiting relatives, making it difficult to know which was the most appropriate venue.

Assize courts were usually held in spring and summer by judges from the London courts who toured the main provincial towns, spending a few days in each hearing serious criminal cases and civil claims. The Assizes were a popular highlight of early nineteenth century provincial life across all social classes. Lists of the cases to be heard were published in advance, and local people treated Assize days as an unofficial holiday, flocking in from surrounding districts to be entertained by interesting or scandalous cases. When Mary Orford’s claim was heard in 1818, the press reported a crowd of 2,000 people in Lancaster Castle. The most vibrant descriptions of breach of promise cases are from provincial Assizes. In London, where courts sat regularly and other forms of public entertainment were readily available, crowds only packed a courtroom to bursting point when particularly embarrassing revelations or large damages were anticipated.

Even though the Assizes had the outward appearance of a public holiday, solicitors had no time to relax. When a case was listed for hearing, solicitors for the plaintiff and the defendant had to arrange for a barrister to present the case in court. Barristers were self-employed, highly trained legal advocates whose role was to represent a client’s interest by highlighting the strengths of their case and trying to undermine any arguments put forward by the other party.

Wealthy plaintiffs and defendants usually commissioned an early opinion on their case from a barrister with expertise in breach of promise. He would study all the information collated by the solicitor and might become involved in negotiating an informal settlement. Poorer people had to be content with a quick reading of their paperwork by any barrister who happened to be in town, irrespective of his competence or experience. Barristers who followed the Assizes as they toured the country were often in the early stages of their careers and trying to build up a reputation. For a barrister, breach of promise claims were usually straightforward to present or defend with little prior knowledge, as they followed a standard form, using a standard patter.

Occasionally, barristers who presented cases they knew little about, found themselves in embarrassing situations, as solicitors could conceal inconvenient facts to secure representation for their client. More than one barrister resigned from the case in court to protect his own reputation when he discovered that he had been deceived about the plaintiff he was representing or that her claim was fraudulent.

Very occasionally, a plaintiff or defendant represented themselves in court. Men were motivated by saving legal costs when they acknowledged a broken engagement. The women who presented their own cases usually had weak claims and probably could not afford to pay an advocate or secure one ‘on spec’.

As soon as a barrister became involved, a further opportunity to settle arose and around two per cent of cases listed for hearing were resolved before the case was called into court. This probably reflects objective assessment by both barristers of how much a jury was likely to award. Interestingly, settlements with no compromise were obtained at this late stage by both parties, suggesting that one of the attorneys had given poor advice to their client. In 1893, Miss Samwans received £2,000, the full amount she had initially asked for, while in 1896, Miss Algar’s claim against Mr Lewis was settled for no damages and without costs, indicating that both barristers regarded it as fraudulent.

When a case was ushered into the courtroom, detailed information about it entered the public domain and was recorded verbatim by legal clerks and journalists using shorthand. This skill formed part of a university education, but it could also be self-taught by a determined individual, such as Charles Dickens, keen to increase his earning capacity. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the most sensational cases were published word for word in pamphlet form and sold, either to a voracious public, or to solicitors eager to know what decisions were being taken in courts across the country. Many more cases were reported in abridged form by newspapers, providing a wealth of detail about the claims, and revealing the social attitudes of the era.

From a historian’s perspective, the clerk or journalist who sat quietly recording the proceedings was the most important person in court, as without their diligent scribing, few traces of the claim for breach of promise of marriage would remain. Extant legal records cover comparatively few of the claims heard in court and often they note the new or the unusual rather than the commonplace, and capture the legal thinking of senior judges rather than the actions of participants.

Early newspapers did not credit contributors with by-lines, so court reporters are largely anonymous unless, like Dickens, they became illustrious for some reason. There were two types of reporter; salaried employees and freelance contributors.

Identical reports in the early decades of the nineteenth century can be found in unrelated newspapers, suggesting authorship by an enterprising freelance writer. On other occasions, even allowing for editing, reports of a case differ sufficiently in detail and emphasis to indicate that they did not originate from the same source. Freelance contributors may have been more usual at the provincial Assizes, possibly providing material to a regional paper and sending reports of the more interesting cases to the nationals. This would have been a more practical method for national newspapers to obtain copy than sending salaried staff to the provinces, on the off-chance that a newsworthy case would be heard. Some early reports were provided to the press by enterprising law firms, from the notes written by their clerks.

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In the early decades of the nineteenth century, breach of promise trials ranked alongside cases of seduction and criminal conversation and regularly attracted large, raucous crowds. For many years newspapers commented on jostling crowds and the inability of the police or court officials to control pushing and shoving. Health and safety had not yet become a consideration, though no reports of injury were noted either. The promise of embarrassing revelations about the amorous misadventures of a man who was wealthy, old, supposedly respectable or had fathered the woman’s child proved a magnet to all social classes and women as well as men jostled to take their place in the audience. In March 1826, when the Stafford Assizes heard a claim by Etty Peake, against John Wedgwood, a member of the famous pottery dynasty, The Observer reported:

As early as seven o’clock in the morning, groups of well-dressed persons of both sexes were collected round the Town Hall, and on the opening of the Court, every place and avenue were crammed full. The heat was so intense in Court that the breath of the crowd condensed on the stone roof of the hall was continually showering down upon those below.

Public interest in Etty’s case arose because of the standing of the defendant and the expectation that she would receive high damages. In the event, the young widow was awarded £1,500 to popular approval. Society was sharply divided by class and wealth and many people saw a woman’s triumph against a privileged man as a victory for the underdog. Audiences often cheered when high damages were awarded.

When a case was known to involve sexual scandal, large audiences were guaranteed and women displayed no prudery when a case was of an indelicate nature, though some judges adopted a protective stance towards them. In 1820, Mr Justice Parke ordered the women and boys of Carlisle to withdraw from court because Jane Lawson’s claim involved seduction and the birth of an illegitimate child. Six years later, the more liberal Mr Justice Garrow told the throng of ladies in the courtroom when a seduction case was called that he did not desire them to wait in court to hear anything that may shock their modesty; unless they chose to remain. A couple of ladies retired at that point, but the great majority stayed, eager to hear the case. By 1890, notions of respectable public conduct for a lady had changed. Miss Harris’s claim also involved seduction and an illegitimate child, and when the judge warned that the case would contain sordid details all the women in court took his advice to leave.

It could take some time for the crowd to settle, and courts sometimes opened their doors early to allow for this, but once everyone was assembled, the hearing began. Straight for ward cases and those undefended were concluded in a few hours. Those where the defendant refuted the plaintiff’s claims might need a full day to get through the evidence and particularly complex ones could run to three or four days. In presenting the case, both barristers treated the courtroom as a theatre and shamelessly played to the gallery, and more specifically to the twelve jurors. The case opened with a prologue as the plaintiff’s barrister outlined her claim. Although it would have sounded original and convincing to inexperienced lay jurors, this usually florid and impassioned opening speech rarely deviated from a standard script about a paragon of virtue who had been wronged by a grievous injury the like of which words could not describe.

If opening speeches are taken at face value, all middle-class women who suffered disappointment in love were beautiful, accomplished and ladylike and all poor ones were modest and from respectable families. Amelia Wharton ‘had been carefully brought up in the strictest morals and she possessed great personal attractions’. Sarah Rose was ‘a young lady of considerable beauty and accomplishments’, whilst Margaret Capper was ‘a young lady of great beauty and accomplishments’, and Keziah Langley excelled as ‘a young lady of good education, great beauty, some accomplishments and not without respectability of birth’.

In the early nineteenth century, it was unusual for a plaintiff to attend court in person as she could take no part in the proceedings. In 1801, Miss Vaughan’s case may have suffered when she was spotted in the public gallery, impatient to hear how much of the defendant’s money she would obtain. If a woman wished to be in court it was better if she sat openly with her legal team. In 1819, newspapers noted Maria Spenser sitting behind her lawyers. A few weeks later, a journalist’s description of Esther Dawson’s beauty was not a barrister’s insincere effusion, strongly suggesting that she had adopted a similar seat. Their barristers may have requested this, so that they could quickly refute anticipated denials or character attacks by the defendant’s witnesses. In many cases it would have been advantageous for a plaintiff not to be present. Rhetoric about beauty, charm, refinement and grief could be undermined if the defendant’s barrister spotted a plain woman who was laughing.

The practice of women sitting in court was more usual by the 1830s and canny lawyers took advantage of this by advising their client to present a modest and ladylike demeanour and how to gain the sympathy of the jury. In the 1870s, when women were first allowed to give evidence, some appeared in their wedding outfit, demonstrating that they envisaged no further use for it, or in deep mourning to symbolise their loss. Ellen Kelly was ‘a prepossessing young woman attired in deep mourning’ and Amelia Potts ‘a middle-aged lady dressed in black satin’. It is unclear when the fad ceased, as newspaper reports of breach of promise cases after the mid-1890s became brief and factual to the point of contempt.

Once the woman’s barrister had established her many virtues and broken heart in the minds of the jurors, the drama began in earnest. Act One belonged to the plaintiff as her barrister called witnesses and produced evidence to confirm the story he had already told; to prove that the woman had expected the defendant to marry her; and that he had refused to honour his word. This was the part of the hearing that the audience relished, because it often involved the reading of letters written by the defendant, and sometimes a barrister made an ironic apology for disappointing the crowd when there were no letters to be read. As poems and pet names and expressions of undying love poured from the barrister’s lips, hearings were punctuated with bursts of laughter from those crowded into court. Adding to the defendant’s often considerable embarrassment, newspapers reported these in detail. Almost two hundred years later, perusing some of these letters in newspaper reports feels uncomfortable and voyeuristic.

The practice of reading letters in court was always questionable, except when this was the only way of proving that the defendant had offered marriage. The alleged justification for reading from private correspondence was to show the close relationship that had once existed between the plaintiff and defendant. In reality, letters were a powerful negotiating tool and some defendants were prepared to settle a case in order to prevent their indiscreet words being read out and then published in the press. In 1828, a judge asked newspapers not to print any details from the letters of a 76-year-old linen draper to a 64-year-old widow who had entrapped him. In an age when the press was liable to face a range of curbs on its existence if it defied figures of authority, the editors respected his request.

Over time, judges became increasingly circumspect about what private correspondence could be read aloud and generally refused to hear anything that did not contain a reference to marriage. Despite this, the distasteful tactic of trying to embarrass or punish a man by reading from his letters continued well into the twentieth century, though by that time the press had stopped reporting the details.

In addition to letters, most plaintiff shad at least one witness who could confirm their engagement and the circumstances of it being broken. Witnesses were sometimes asked about the defendant’s finances and standard of living to assist the jury in deciding what the plaintiff had lost. Any witness evidence could be tested by the defendant’s barrister who often focussed upon the plaintiff’s reaction to the broken engagement, trying to establish how upset she really was.

Plaintiffs who gave evidence were treated solicitously. In 1881, middle-class Kate Lamb was allowed to sit while she told her story. Women rarely faced harsh cross-examination as causing a woman any distress might provoke a jury to award her exemplary damages. For less educated women, speaking from the witness box could be a disservice, as any solecism or deviation from middle-class moral standards could perhaps contribute to the impression that she did not deserve substantial compensation. Ann Letts, a 54-year-old widow, caused laughter in a Liverpool courtroom after replying 207, when asked her age, thinking that she had been told to give her house number. She obtained a farthing in 1873 from John McGrath; particularly contemptuous treatment by the jury given that McGrath had used a promise of marriage he had no intention of honouring to borrow money from her and was proving evasive about paying it back.

In 1878, Ann Sutton lost her claim against Thomas Lucas after some of her letters were read out in court. Questioned about the disgusting content, she replied that her letters were no worse than his. At this point, the judge intervened, saying that ‘it was not desirable that a contest of indecency should take place in the court room’, and stopped the hearing, ruling that Ann could not recover any damages even if she established a broken engagement.

When the plaintiff’s witnesses had been heard, Act Two was directed by the defendant’s barrister, who pleaded his client’s case. Men who attended court also followed conventions about their appearance, attempting to look as poor and foolish as possible to keep damages to a minimum. Defendants regularly turned up ungroomed, probably unwashed, and wearing their shabbiest clothing. In 1870, an unwary Robert Ensor found himself admitting to Annie Jones’s barrister that he had a better jacket and trousers at home. Barristers quickly discovered that it was unwise for a defendant to give evidence and rarely took the risk of allowing the defendant to speak as he then faced cross-examination by the plaintiff’s legal team. No holds were barred in the cross examination of a male defendant, and lawyers were likely to lead unsophisticated and uneducated men into indiscreet admissions.

The defendant’s case was less predictable than the plaintiff’s, depending whether he denied any breach; acknowledged it and tried to influence the jury towards low damages; or, as occasionally happened, pulled the rabbit from the hat with an irrefutable defence. In 1891, The Guardian spared the blushes of an unnamed plaintiff when the defendant produced a letter in which she expressed her pleasure in breaking the engagement and stated that her decision was irrevocable. It was not unusual for a defendant to have no witnesses to confirm his story and to rely solely on the impression his barrister could create.

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Act Three was the summing up, with each barrister emphasising the justice of their client’s case. The plaintiff’s barrister trusted that the jury would do the right thing by awarding his client exemplary damages, whilst the defendant’s often pointed out that the plaintiff had had a lucky escape by not marrying the defendant and that low damages would meet the justice of the case. Occasionally, an advocate could push the theatrical too far, and at the Liverpool Assizes of spring 1849, Sergeant Wilkins serenaded the audience with a parody of the Irish folk-song, Molly Malone. The impromptu performance reduced those present to gales of laughter and the judge had to warn the jury not to be led away from the facts of the case by the humorous speech of the defendant’s counsel.

When both sides had concluded their case, the judge, himself a trained lawyer who had practised as a barrister, had to sum up the arguments for the jury. This involved identifying the salient facts, advising the jury of the law, and offering guidance about what jurors should take into consideration in determining damages if they found for the plaintiff. Judges were supposed to be objective, but in many cases they tried to steer the jury towards a verdict for the plaintiff. The majority of judges supported the breach of promise claim because it deterred men from lying to women about their intentions, but a few were opposed to it unless the woman had sustained identifiable harm.

Judges usually summed up fairly, but their personal views can sometimes be detected in their approach and emphasis. They tended to point out that a woman suffered substantial detriment to her prospects in life when a man broke their engagement. In some cases where there was negligible evidence of a promise of marriage the judge refrained from telling the jury what constituted evidence and said that they would have to decide whether they thought there was a promise or not. Very occasionally, a strict judge reminded jurors that a serious offer of marriage and a definite acceptance were fundamental aspects of the law.

The final scene of the courtroom drama was left to the jury who, as men without any legal training, represented the prevailing views of male, middle-class society. The majority of breach of promise cases were decided by a Common Jury of men whose property reached a particular rateable value, usually lower-middle class men running their own small businesses. Women whose property met the rateable value were not eligible to be jurors until 1921. Either party to a claim could request that the case was heard by a Special Jury, for which privilege they had to pay a small fee. A Special Jury consisted of men whose property had a higher rateable value, those in reputable professions or who were titled. Electing for trial by a Special Jury meant that those of higher social standing could guarantee being judged by their social equals.

The female plaintiff, rather than the facts, was usually the most important consideration for jurors, and barristers accentuated a woman’s feminine qualities. Men and women were believed to have separate but complementary roles, and as novelist Anthony Trollope explained, ‘a woman’s life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man’s life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife’. To the class of men who made up a jury, women were seen, not necessarily as an inferior sex, but as a weaker one needing special consideration. A man who reneged on his duty to protect and provide when he had secured a dependant woman’s heart, broke a social taboo, whatever his reasons for deciding to end the engagement. If the judge indicated that the scoundrel had also reduced her chances of finding someone else who would marry her, jurors saw this as a very serious injury.

In breach of promise cases, jurors sometimes returned improbable verdicts for the plaintiff which were not supported by the evidence, or awarded disproportionately high damages. On several occasions when a judge guided jurors to a verdict for the defendant or low damages, juries responded with a verdict for the plaintiff and an award of a few hundred pounds. Humanitarian impulses came to the fore and some jurors were prepared to redistribute capital from a man with means to a woman who had little money of her own to give her more economic independence. Even if an engagement had been of very short duration, poor women would have been sorely vexed by loss of the security marriage could provide. Those who had been engaged for a few years had voluntarily given up the possibility of finding another suitor who would have supported them.

Where middle-class juries particularly lacked judgement was when dealing with working-class defendants, as they seem to have had little appreciation of how much a poor man could afford, or what his former fiancée had lost. Some juries rewarded impudent claims with considerable damages and failed to draw an appropriate line between ensuring a poor woman obtained her legal costs and condoning those who were exploiting vulnerable men.

Contemporaries also regularly criticised jurors for basing damages on a woman’s looks and there is evidence in newspaper reports of attractive women who received substantial awards. Significantly, some women whose claims were dismissed by juries, or who received trivial or contemptuous damages to compensate them for the property stolen by their fiancé, appear to have been plain, or otherwise figures of fun. That such decisions were not publicly criticised shows a very ugly side to Victorian society, underneath its respectable middle-class façade.

Newspapers regularly reported the reaction of the crowd to the verdict and damages. This was usually cheering, but particularly generous awards gave rise to gasps of surprise and unexpectedly low ones to shock. Very occasionally the reaction of a defendant to a favourable verdict was reported. In 1817, Mr Dennis and his friends paraded around Cambridge with knots of ribbons in their hats, whilst in 1828, ‘Mr Joseph Acres, the defendant, was seen riding out of Hertford in a right merry mood, with a streaming bunch of yellow ribbons in his hat, and followed by a crowd of shouting townspeople’. More usually the final glimpse of a defendant reveals him sitting morosely as his barrister asks for the payment of the damages to be delayed so that an appeal could be made.

Decisions in Assize Courts were not the end of the case, as the jury’s verdict had to be recorded at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. If the plaintiff or defendant was unhappy with the outcome this could be raised, possibly leading to a further set of hearings before judges in which the parties could argue whether the jury’s verdict should be set aside and a new trial granted. It was extremely rare for the jury’s decision, however absurd, not to be upheld, as is shown by the claim of Bessie Jones which was heard in 1882. The presiding judge refused to accept the jury’s verdict of £150 damages, because her evidence was full of contradiction and inconsistency, whilst Thomas Greenwood’s story was much more credible. Despite his disquiet, senior judges in the Royal Courts of Justice decided to enter the verdict, stating that the jury must have taken all of this into consideration when finding for the plaintiff.

Appeal against a verdict was possible on a point of law, or sometimes on a point of fact. Making successful appeal against a disproportionate award of damages was almost impossible unless the plaintiff had maliciously overstated the defendant’s wealth. The consistent refusal of senior judges to intervene in cases where the damages were very disproportionate to the defendant’s means does them little credit. Their failure to ensure that damages were realistic contributed to the growing criticism of breach of promise as an unfair claim and indicates that judges were out of touch with the lower classes.

After a verdict had been entered a formal appeal could then be made to a higher court. This was the Exchequer Chamber until 1875, when a new Court of Appeal was set up, staffed by very experienced judges. For the next 80 years, the Appeal Court found itself determining a number of technical matters arising from broken engagements, including the ownership of the engagement ring, the rights of those involved in bigamous unions and whether promises to marry were valid if they involved people who were in the process of divorce.

Newspaper reports reveal how much public interest in breach of promise cases changed over time. After 1830, the Assizes gradually disappeared as informal holidays because industrial and commercial development drew people into a defined employment with fixed hours. By the 1860s those jostling in court for space were probably from the unemployed working-class. In 1869, The Times recorded, ‘as is usual in cases of this description the details were received with bursts of laughter from the crowd of idlers who block up every passage in this miserable court’.

Rigid, if unwritten, codes of social respectability developed and middle-class ladies were rarely seen at court hearings. Middle-class men and those aspiring to upward mobility, may have thought twice before entering a court-room to be entertained by scandal. Interest had not completely disappeared, as was demonstrated in 1884 when actress May Finney sued Lord Garmoyle, the son of an Earl. This was the first high profile breach of promise trial for some years and public interest far exceeded the capacity of the small London courtroom. Leaders of fashionable society and stage celebrities were spotted in the audience. Women were accommodated on the jurors’ benches, forcing the jurors to struggle into court through a door at the back of the jury box and stand closely packed together. Presumably they were delighted when counsel opened the hearing by announcing that the claim had been settled.

The content of breach of promise cases after 1850 would have been less entertaining to an audience. As middle-class ladies abandoned court hearings in favour of private arrangements, the likelihood of high damages was reduced. After 1869, when it became impossible to infer an engagement, reading from a defendant’s letters was less common, reducing the titillation that many in the public gallery craved. The mundane problems of working-class plaintiffs would have held little interest for their contemporaries.

Theatre now provided a new, and respectable, way to be entertained by breach of promise. In 1875, Trial by Jury became the first of Gilbert and Sullivan’s many light-hearted musical comedies. The plot is based on contemporary expectations of a breach of promise trial; a beautiful, amoral and supposedly heartbroken plaintiff, a hapless defendant, avaricious attorneys and the sort of neat ending that could not be guaranteed by the real thing; the judge solving everyone’s dilemma by deciding to marry the plaintiff himself. Music Hall was more working-class than the theatre and by the 1870s it was reflecting the trials and tribulations of working-class plaintiffs in a range of saucy situations, replicating the vicarious thrills that had once stemmed from the reading of letters. It reached its triumphant peak in 1907 with Waiting at the Church, one of the most famous Music Hall routines of all time, in which a naïve woman cheerily explains how she has been tricked out of her savings by the lies of a married man.

The transfer of breach of promise from the confined courtroom to the public auditorium confirms that until the Great War, a broken engagement was not viewed as a private tragedy but as public property. The parallels between court hearings and public theatre capture one very unpleasant aspect of broken engagements in the nineteenth century; the willingness of all sections of society to find amusement in the misfortunes of others.