On 17 August 1839, passage of an Act to Amend the Law Relating to the Custody of Infants. The Act allowed a separated wife to petition the court for custody of her children under the age of seven. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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Rachel Ablow, “‘One Flesh,’ One Person, and the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act”

Kelly Hager, “Chipping Away at Coverture: The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857″

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

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by David Rettenmaier

On November 17, 1855, publication of Robert Browning’s Men and Women, a two-volume publication of Robert Browning’s major poetic works. Image: Photogravure of Robert Browning by Juliet Margaret Cameron (1865, printed c. 1893). Original is at the Art Institute of Chicago. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Robert Browning’s Men and Women was a major literary event in nineteenth-century Britain in its shift of emphasis from the private, atemporal and generally non-social genre of Romantic lyricism to the ironies and enigmas of human awareness and social relationships, to dramatic action in human speech. His men and women are presented overtly as speech acts, grounded in psychological and cultural origins, and in the ambiguities of linguistic processes. Readers often found Browning’s mode of writing obscure, but its methods and implications consistently engage with other domains of Victorian thought, in religion, biology, and psychiatry. While the status of this publication was not widely understood at the time, its value is manifest in its reception history, in the discussion and representations that constitute its ongoing existence as a historical event.

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E. Warwick Slinn, "On Robert Browning’s Men and Women"

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by David Rettenmaier

On 14 March 1856, presentation of the Petition for Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law, 1856. The petition began the joint effort by lawmakers and public women to grant married women control of their own wealth.

Articles

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

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Rachel Ablow, “‘One Flesh,’ One Person, and the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act”

Anne D. Wallace, “On the Deceased Wife’s Sister Controversy, 1835-1907″

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by David Rettenmaier

On 28 August 1857, passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. The Act legalized divorce and protected a divorced woman’s property and future earnings. The grounds for divorce for men was adultery (in legal terms, criminal conversation), for women adultery combined with bigamy, incest, bestiality, sodomy, desertion, cruelty, or rape. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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Kelly Hager, “Chipping Away at Coverture: The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857″

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Rachel Ablow, “‘One Flesh,’ One Person, and the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act”

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “The Moxon Tennyson as Textual Event: 1857, Wood Engraving, and Visual Culture”

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

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by David Rettenmaier

March 1858 saw the first issue of England’s first feminist monthly magazine, the English Woman's Journal. Aimed primarily at a middle-class audience, the magazine promoted new employment and educational opportunities for women, and featured a mix of political and social commentary, reportage of current events, poetry, book reviews, and a correspondence column. Image: Photograph of Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc (date unknown). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Janice Schroeder, “On the English Woman’s Journal, 1858-62″

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by David Rettenmaier

On 9 August 1870, the Married Women’s Property Act was passed. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This Act established limited protections for some separate property for married women, including the right to retain up to £200 of any earning or inheritance. Before this all of a woman's property owned before her marriage, as well as all acquired after the marriage, automatically became her husband's alone. Only women whose families negotiated different terms in a marriage contract were able to retain control of some portion of their property.

Articles

Rachel Ablow, "On the Married Woman's Property Act, 1870"

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Kelly Hager, “Chipping Away at Coverture: The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857″

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

Anne Wallace, “On the Deceased Wife’s Sister Controversy, 1835-1907″

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by David Rettenmaier

In 1877, Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell published Fat and Blood, and How to Make Them, the medical text that popularized the infamous Rest Cure for nervous women. (Exact month of publication unknown; if you have information about the correct date, please email felluga@purdue.edu with this information.) Principle elements of the cure included bed rest, force feeding, isolation, massage, and electrical stimulation of muscles. Image: Photograph of Silas Weir Mitchell, 1881. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Anne Stiles, “The Rest Cure, 1873-1925″

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by David Rettenmaier

On 27 November 1879 occurred the election for seats on the London School Board for the Third Board.

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Patricia Rigg, “Gender and Politics in London School Board Elections: Augusta Webster, Helen Taylor, and a Decade of Electoral Battles”

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by David Rettenmaier

1882 Married Women's Property Act passed on 1 Jan 1883. Referred to as the 1882 MWPA, the Act came into effect at the beginning of 1883. Although still identifying some married women's property as "separate," this Act significantly increased the scope and protections for married women's acquisition and retention of property separate from their husbands. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Articles

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

Anne Wallace, “On the Deceased Wife’s Sister Controversy, 1835-1907″

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Rachel Ablow, “‘One Flesh,’ One Person, and the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act”

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by David Rettenmaier

From August 1888 to September 1889, the serial killer known as the Whitechapel Murderer or Jack the Ripper stalked women living in the East End of London.

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Heidi Kaufman, “1800-1900: Inside and Outside the Nineteenth-Century East End”

Marlene Tromp, “A Priori: Harriet Buswell and Unsolved Murder Before Jack the Ripper, 24-25 December 1872″

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by David Rettenmaier

On 26 November 1888 occurred the election for seats on the London School Board for the Sixth Board.

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Patricia Rigg, “Gender and Politics in London School Board Elections: Augusta Webster, Helen Taylor, and a Decade of Electoral Battles”

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by David Rettenmaier