Caroline Norton - Political Activity

Political Activity

Caroline was soon faced with an additional tragedy; the death of her youngest son, William, in 1842. The child, out riding alone, suffered a fall from his horse and was injured. According to Caroline, the child’s wounds were minor; however, they were not properly attended and blood-poisoning set in. Norton, realising that the child was near death, sent for Caroline. Unfortunately, William died before she arrived in Scotland. Caroline blamed Norton for the child's death, accusing him of neglect. After William's death, Norton allowed Caroline to visit their sons, but he retained full custody, and all of her visits were supervised.

Due to her dismal domestic situation, Caroline became passionately involved in the passage of laws promoting social justice, especially those granting rights to married and divorced women. Her poems "A Voice from the Factories" (1836) and "The Child of the Islands" (1845) centred around her political views.

When Parliament debated the subject of divorce reform in 1855, Caroline submitted to the members a detailed account of her own marriage, and described the difficulties faced by women as the result of existing laws: "An English wife may not leave her husband's house. Not only can he sue her for restitution of "conjugal rights," but he has a right to enter the house of any friend or relation with whom she may take refuge...and carry her away by force...

If her husband take proceedings for a divorce, she is not, in the first instance, allowed to defend herself...She is not represented by attorney, nor permitted to be considered a party to the suit between him and her supposed lover, for "damages."

If an English wife be guilty of infidelity, her husband can divorce her so as to marry again; but she cannot divorce the husband, a vinculo, however profligate he may be....

Those dear children, the loss of whose pattering steps and sweet occasional voices made the silence of new home intolerable as the anguish of death...what I suffered respecting those children, God knows . . . under the evil law which suffered any man, for vengeance or for interest, to take baby children from the mother.

Primarily because of Caroline's intense campaigning, Parliament passed the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and the Married Women's Property Act 1870. Her most recent biographer Diane Atkinson notes that unlike in 1839 and 1857 Caroline played no part in the campaigning for the 1870 Act. Under the Custody of Children Act legally separated or divorced wives, provided they had not been found guilty of criminal conversation, were granted the right to custody of their children up to the age of seven, and periodic access thereafter. The Act applied in England, Wales and Ireland only. While Caroline could have hoped for custody of her youngest son, and access to her older sons who were seven and ten when the Act was passed into law, her husband insisted that her sons stay in Scotland. The Act gave married women, for the first time, a right to their children. However because women needed to petition in the Court of Chancery, in practice few women had the financial means to petition for their rights. The Matrimonial Causes Act reformed the law on divorce, amongst others making divorce more affordable, and established a model of marriage based on contract. The Married Women's Property Act 1870 allowed married women to inherit property and take court action on their own behalf. The Act granted married women in the UK, for the first time, a separate legal identity from their husband.

In 1849 Daniel Maclise finished his fresco of Justice in the House of Lords, for which Norton had modelled. He chose her because she was seen by many as a famous victim of injustice. Caroline's old friend, Lord Melbourne, opposed the reforms she fought for. He was scolded for his opposition by Queen Victoria; the Queen wrote that he defended his actions, stating: "I don't think you should give a woman too much right...there should not be two conflicting powers...a man ought to have the right in a family."

While Caroline fought to extend women's legal rights, she wasn't involved in further social activism, and had no interest in the 19th-century women's movement with regard to issues such as women's suffrage. In fact, in an article published in The Times in 1838, countering a claim that she was a "radical", Caroline stated: "The natural position of woman is inferiority to man. Amen! That is a thing of God's appointing, not of man's devising. I believe it sincerely, as part of my religion. I never pretended to the wild and ridiculous doctrine of equality." Caroline became outspoken on abortion, arguing in the Woodhull's and Claffin's Weekly (19 November 1870) that "Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned...Perhaps there will come a time when...an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her motherhood...and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with."