Mrs. Mayne and Her Boxing Kangaroo: A Married Woman Tests Her Property Rights in Colonial New South Wales

For over 150 years from the early eighteenth century, convict transportation was a primary method of punishing serious crime in Britain and Ireland. Convicts were first sent to the colonies in North America and the Caribbean and then to three newly established Australian colonies on the other side of the world. Conditions were very different between the two locations, yet the fundamental law of transportation remained the same for decades after the process began in Australia.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Imperial-colonial Legal Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perish or Prosper: The Law and Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1700–1850

Kercher¹

2003

“…Precisely because of the restrictions applied to their husbands, they somewhat paradoxically enjoyed freedoms not available to other women. 24 However, this flexibility cannot simply be explained by the peculiarities of NSW's convict past. Nevertheless the presence of married women as litigants in court disturbed some judges, such as Justice Willis, who, in standi in court."…”

Section: Coverture Laws: From England To New South Walesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…23 Golder also attributes it to the peculiar nature of convict society, emphasizing that the flexible approach to the law necessitated by the presence of convicts was extended to married women. 24 However, this flexibility cannot simply be explained by the peculiarities of NSW's convict past. There is a longer heritage, stretching back to the eighteenth century, of married women negotiating with the laws of coverture, particularly in relation to wives being treated as femmes sole in their business dealings.…”

Section: Coverture Laws: From England To New South Walesmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Your Money Is Not Your Own: Coverture and Married Women In Business in Colonial New South Wales

Bishop¹

2015

In 1860 and again in 1864, Alexander Spiers appeared before the insolvency court in Sydney, endeavoring to explain his failure in business. He was described as a milliner in the records but he had never made a bonnet in his life. The real milliner and businesswoman was his wife, Ann Spiers, who had been running her business since her marriage in 1846. She made purchasing and pricing decisions, managed staff, was the front person in the shop, and advertised in newspapers. She told the insolvency court in 1860 that her husband "used to keep the books and attend to the house business but he never sold anything in the shop. He used to mark the goods occasionally." Alexander Spiers similarly distanced himself. "My wife put the value upon the articles in our stock," he said. "She is much better acquainted with their value than myself." In spite of this, it was Alexander Spiers' name that was on the insolvency papers. Under the law of coverture, he was responsible for his wife's debts and her business legally belonged to him. 1 Ann Spiers is one of many married women who conducted businesses in nineteenth century Sydney in New South Wales (NSW), and across the Anglophone world, in spite of their legal disabilities. 2 Taking a stroll down Pitt Street, one of the principal streets in Sydney in 1858, a visitor would have encountered Mrs. White the fruiterer, Mrs. Robson the milliner, and Mrs. Doak the straw bonnet maker. There was Mrs. Stitt at her baby linen warehouse; Mrs. Foans, Mrs. Cowell, and Mrs. Palmer in their hotels; neighbours and drapers, Mrs. Tuting and Mrs. Farmer; two more milliners, Mrs. Bynon and Mrs. Stone; the French teacher Madame Dutruc; Mrs. Stephens in her circulating library; and Mrs. Atkins, monthly nurse. 3This period in the British world has been seen as the apogee of the Victorian ideology of female domesticity, with its separation of public and private. 4 Women were regarded as doyennes of home and hearth, supportive of, but subordinate to, their breadwinning husbands. Going into business is often depicted as having been the last resort for a desperate spinster or widow, devoid of male financial support; but many women in business, such as those mentioned above, were wives and mothers. These women were running businesses; but legally, as shown in the example of Ann and Alexander Spiers, those businesses did not belong to them. The money they made was not their own.The Victorian ideology of domesticity was underpinned by a legal system that dictated that wives were under the protection or "cover" of their husbands. The law of coverture ensured that "by marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law, and that one is the husband." 5 Husbands were deemed responsible for the maintenance of their wives, and controlled any property or income that their wives owned. Wives could not sue or be sued in court apart from their husbands, could not enter into contracts or go into debt independently, and were regarded as acting as their husbands' 2. Recent international scholarship has uncovered their p...

“…A judge could also order the transportation of those found guilty of petty larceny, which was not even nominally capital. 13 This direct sentence of transportation was the first kind of transportation under the 1718 Act.…”

Section: The Transportation Actsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The CANZ Approach to Legal History

Karsten¹

2003

The first quality the reader may have noted about these two essays is that they both deal with the question of the legal rights of marriage partners to the economic fruits of one another's labor. But inasmuch as this was only one of several issues addressed by Bruce Kercher, I see it only as an interesting coincidence. Somewhat more noteworthy is the difference between their methodologies: Golder and Kirkby's engagingly crafted socio-legal analysis beautifully illustrates the “thick description” virtues of a case study of litigation, reform agitation and legislation, while Kercher gets us well beyond Alan Atkinson's pioneering study of his subject by carefully drawing evidence unavailable to Atkinson from some of the many cases that he and his research assistants have uncovered from manuscript and newspaper records over the past several years (decisions of the Supreme Courts of New South Wales and VanDieman's Land that are steadily becoming available to us all on two websites). Needless to say, both methodologies “work.”