Marriage: Love and Law exhibition catalogue - Flipbook - Page 53
A MOST SCANDALOUS CONSPIRACY
KIERA LINDSEY
So it was that with their enthralling tales of runaway romance
and thwarted love—as well as darker shadow-stories
of kidnapping, assault and rape—the crime of abduction
offered colonial governments a colourful public spectacle
through which to communicate a host of messages regarding
not only masculine and feminine conduct but also the
institutions of marriage and family. When such cases came
before the courts, public seating was typically packed with
those eager to clap their eyes on the key antagonists, be they
furious fathers, disobedient daughters and slippery suitors,
or unruly women and their wayward male counterparts.
Abduction was a crime that had its roots in the ritual of bride theft and the
ancient Irish laws known as Senchus Mor. Irish men had been ‘taking’ brides
for centuries, typically in highly regulated practices that many celebrated
as something of an Irish ‘national sport’. However, the English took a dimmer
view of these traditions, and by the early 18th Century deemed the crime
of taking ‘maydens’ from their father’s care by force or by ‘seducing’ them with
‘fair promises, trifling goods and false flattery’, a form of property theft that
carried with it the death penalty.
Abduction law differed from other legal disputes involving romantic scandal
such as seduction or criminal conversation in that it was prosecuted in the
criminal court. As a form of property theft in which a woman was ‘property’
taken from her father without his approval, her consent was, as the judge
presiding over Regina v. Meehan (1851) insisted, ‘of no moment’ according
to these statutes. A man could be executed for abduction whether he had
engaged in violence and violation, scheming and seduction or an entirely
consensual elopement. And although it was specifically intended to protect
dynastic wealth from scheming opportunists who sought a wealthy wife
as a solution to their financial woes, by the first half of the 19th Century, many
a well-to-do middle-class family found themselves embroiled in a legal episode
that threatened to reduce their hard earned income and expose their most
intimate lives to a public that delighted in such salacious entertainment.
By the 1840s ambitious colonists were intent upon seizing the reins of
responsible government. They sought to draw a line between the penal past—
when the colonies had been condemned as ‘a sink of wickedness’—and their
increasingly civil society. In the process, the institutions of marriage and family
became crucial to distinguishing between the once ‘rampant’ concubinage
of the past and this new respectability. Consequently, at the very moment
colonists in NSW focused upon procuring self-government, both institutions
came to acquire heightened significance in the colonial courts and newspapers.
Not only was there a significant increase in abduction cases that were brought
before the courts during this period, but, the court itself often became
a battleground between those willing to indulge a little romantic laxity and
those who most certainly did not.
Aware of the public’s appetite for scandal, colonial newspapers were also keen
to keep abreast of the unfurling details of an abduction trial. And no wonder,
these cases offered a tantalising menu of human behaviours, very often served
with a juicy side dish of moral outrage. There was the idealistic and ardent lover
who was not to be confused with the gullible girl, the ‘unfortunate victim’ or the
young woman who was desperate to escape domestic drudgery.1 The public
was often quick to discern the scheming cad and his opportunistic family from
the vicious predator, ‘the gay Lothario’ or the fellow who had simply chanced
his hand.2 The outraged patriarch and his wounded wife were also popular
figures for colonial audiences, particularly from the mid-1840s onwards,
as colonists sought to replace the promiscuous standards of the Regency
era with the prim new values of the Victorian age.
In such an environment, lawyers worked hard to tar their opponents with
whatever brush best served their purpose, and the motivations and methods
of all involved were typically subject to forensic scrutiny. All the while,
local rumours were dredged up and insinuations let loose, much to the
embarrassment of not only the defendant, but, often also, the prosecuting
party. Indeed, the colonial court became a place where all involved could find
their reputations impugned. Few got off lightly, which is why most colonial
families chose to settle these dramas out of court.
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