Noble Blood - Caroline Norton Balancing the Scales of Justice

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

CW: Spousal abuse, miscarriage. In the UK in the early 19th century, married women didn't exist as their own legal entities; they were extensions of their husbands. Caroline Norton's abusive husband took full custody of their children, and Caroline tried to do everything in their power to get them back. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school.

Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? They hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. It's the middle of June 1836, and the courtroom in London is packed. The man being publicly tried for infidelity is as high ranking as you. can be in England, short of being the king. He is the prime minister, Lord Melbourne. But the woman he may have cheated on his wife with is as much a draw as he is. She is one of the most well-known women in London, a beauty but an unusual one, dark-eyed and flirtatious and entirely too smart by 19th century standards. A writer married herself to an abusive husband who, as rumor had it, had once pushed her so hard he had caused a miscarriage. The woman's name is

Caroline Norton, rumored Vixen, close friend, and maybe more of the prime minister. But as the Spectators who came to see her quickly realize, Caroline Norton isn't there in the courtroom. She's elsewhere, hold up with her mother, away from her children, waiting for a messenger's horse to gallop toward her with news of her fate. It was only right in a way that she wasn't in the courtroom on that drizzling day in June, because in the year 1836 in the United Kingdom, a married woman like Caroline had no legal existence. Unmarried women, socially looked down upon as they were, existed as legal entities in the court system.

Unmarried women had custody rights over their children born out of wedlock. But when Caroline Norton was accused of infidelity, as far as the legal system was concerned, she didn't exist. She could stand to lose everything, her children, her access to her earnings as a writer, her social standing. Yet her legal identity was fully subsumed into her husband. And it was her truly bad luck to be married to a man named George Norton. Mr. Norton had once asked his more popular vivacious wife to use her ties with the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to advance his own career.

Now Mr. Norton was suing the Prime Minister for criminal conversation with his wife. Criminal Conversation, or Crimcon, was a euphemism that meant adultery. Though it took two to Tango, only men could be hauled to court. for the crime. Because Caroline Norton was married, she couldn't be sued. She was not a legal entity. What she was was the legal property of her husband that may have been devalued by the prime minister.

The story of Caroline Norton is the tale of a bold woman of the 19th century, a writer of sparkling wit, trapped by the law and by the culture of her time, never a feminist by her own description, and yet a staunch campaigner for women's rights. It's the story of a sad woman, cut off from the children she loved by an abusive man. And it's the tale of the long legal battles that finally earned basic rights for women in the United Kingdom. Caroline Norton was a lot of the long legal battles. Caroline Norton was the popular author of five novels and 12 poetry collections. She was the close correspondent of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. She was daughter in a line of writers, a wife unable to obtain a divorce from an abusive husband, a loving mother who adored her three boys, and a grieving woman who was

kept away from them. She was the subject of a ton of press and a ton of of rumors. Mary Shelley called her spellbinding. The Prime Minister Lord Melbourne called her husband a stupid brute for whom she was too headstrong. Her own grandfather said he wouldn't want to meet her in a dark wood. And Caroline Norton, pen in hand, was behind the fight that would earn married women legal recognition for the first time in British history. I'm Dana Schwartz, this is Noble Blood. Caroline Norton was born Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan on March 22, 1808 in London. The Sheridan family name was already famous for both art and scandal. Her grandfather, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was the author of the famous play, The School for Scandal, an aptly titled

Satire of the World of Social Status and Gossip, which might sound familiar. if you listen to our episodes on the Duchess of Devonshire, who ran the social circle that that play was mocking. While Caroline's mother was pregnant with her, her father was convicted of criminal conversation that had taken place before he was married, but not before his mistress was married. This was the buzzed-about atmosphere

in which dark-eyed Caroline was born. Her earliest life was marked by tragedy. When she was only five and a half, her father left to tend to his health and died. After that, Caroline was sent to Scotland, where she didn't see her mother for four years. But everything picked up for Caroline as she entered young adulthood. She reunited with her mother and siblings, and they all moved to Hampton Court Palace in London. Like many young writers to be, Caroline and her sisters wrote, little books, except unlike many young writers to be, a publisher printed 50 copies of Caroline's

book when she was about 11 years old. She grew up as the middle of three sisters who were known as exuberant beauties, all swearing like men, eyes twinkling with the knowledge of what they were doing to these hapless gentlemen around them. They called to mind the three Bronte sisters, who were born about 10 years later. The Sheridan girls were just fun, more like the three social Schuyler sisters as portrayed in the musical Hamilton. And if we're going with the Skylar comparison,

Caroline was definitely the Angelica. She was the wittiest, the most gossiped about, the slyest, the most outrageous and playful, and egotistical and irreverent. She was also the most unusual looking, it was generally agreed, but that only made her more captivating. She was known to lower her big eyelids and look up from under them in descriptions that remind me a little of Princess Diana.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, described Caroline far better and more sensuously than I could. Quote, I never saw a woman I thought so fascinating. Had I been a man, I should certainly have fallen in love with her. I would have been spellbound, and had she taken the trouble, she might have wound me around her finger. There is something in the pretty way in which her witticisms glide, as it were, from her lips, end quote. If you're hearing a lot of famous women in the comparisons I'm making here, there's a reason. Bright, literary Caroline, was born into an era when many of many of them.

authors were women. Jane Austen, George Elliott, Elizabeth Gaskell, Caroline's own mother. Yet any married woman of the era, no matter how much her own writing earned, would find that her copyright and her earnings belonged to her husband. And artists didn't make much of a living, then or now. So the Sheridan's were not rich. Caroline would have little dowry to offer a husband. That didn't matter to her first love, Ralph Levison Smith, with whom she fell in love when she was around 17. But by her 19th birthday, Ralph had fallen ill and died. Caroline would look back on this first lost hope for decades to come, always wondering how differently her life might have been if she had been able to marry the boy she had truly loved. Instead, she married George Norton, younger son in line for the title of Lord Grantley.

He had been totally heartstruck over Caroline from the moment he first laid eyes on her. She was 19 when she married him, and he was 27. He may have been obsessed with his vivacious young bride, but even so, he was late to his own wedding. The Norton couple lived together in a home called Stories Gate, which sounds like a fairy tale, but their life wound up more like a nightmare. Things were all right at first. Caroline hosted salons of high society writers and thinkers, still able to use her sparkling wit and sly personality.

George Norton was a member of Parliament, and he could walk from their front door to the House of Commons in a matter of minutes. And when Caroline moved aside her white muslin curtains and peered out her window, she could almost see Downing Street, home of the prime minister. Within the span of four years, Caroline, one of three beautiful sisters, gave birth to three sons, Fletcher, Brin, and Little Willie. Her pregnancies were called being, quote, on the sofa, another little euphemism, just like adultery was criminal conversational.

Her three boys were the light of her life. She loved them dearly, deeply, and immediately. She published books and edited magazines while caring for the babies, sounding exactly like a working writer today. She even wrote her own books while nursing. But it didn't take long for George Norton's infatuation with his young vivacious bride-to-be Caroline Sheridan to turn into violent abuse toward his wife, Caroline Norton. He kicked her, shoved her, burned her hand with a tea kettle. When she miscarried in 1835, rumor had it he had pushed her. She stayed away from her husband for a little while after that, but inevitably she had to come back. She was a writer, and her byline was Mrs. Norton. Her earnings belonged to her husband. Her earnings belonged to her

husband. She was supporting him in every possible way, including when he lost his seat in Parliament. That was when George Norton first asked his wife Caroline for help. He wanted her to use the popularity and charm that had first charmed him and now enraged him to intercede with the government's home secretary, a certain William Lamb, also known as Lord Melbourne. future prime minister. Caroline adored Lord Melbourne. He was a handsome, successful man, the opposite of her husband, and he was a true bright spot in her life.

And Lord Melbourne seemed to adore the beguiling Caroline Norton right back. They exchanged letters that were always friendly, often teasing, usually flirtatious, occasionally romantic. She joked about making a few, future daughter of hers, his second wife. His first wife, who had died a few years earlier, had been Caroline Lamb, lover of Lord Byron, whose story we have covered on this podcast. Basically, everyone in this social circle was having affairs. Lord Melbourne called on Caroline Norton at home. Once, she even gasped, took his hand in Parliament. They both were infatuated at the least. They

found an entrancing, exciting, sweet joy with each other. Caroline, at least, may have been in some form of love. Lord Melbourne had already paid off a former criminal conversion charge, so he was certainly willing to engage in extramarital dalliances. He and Caroline may have heavy petted. They may have had sex. But there's not really concrete evidence to suggest they did. The letters between them read to me, at least like heterosexual friends with a romantic or flirtatious spark between them. People who recognize that in different circumstances, they almost certainly would have been together. But they definitely are flirtatious letters. We just don't know for a fact what went on with the two of them behind closed doors.

Of course, flirtatious ambiguity rarely matters to an abusive husband. In April 1846, George and Caroline had another of their many fights. By this time, Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Caroline didn't know how bad the fight with her husband had been until after she left to visit her sister, and upon returning, found that her husband had taken her children away from her. Caroline Norton was a writer, a flirt, a hostess, but more than anything, if you had asked her, she would have said she was a mother. She adored her three boys with an overwhelming love.

I have done nothing but cry, she wrote to Lord Melbourne. I could hear their little feet running merrily over my head while I sat sobbing below, only the ceiling between us, and I am not able to get at them. The problem was, at the time, fathers had full custody rights to their children, the opposite of most custody disputes today, which generally favor the mother. Ironically, if Caroline had had illegitimate children with George Norton, the children would have been hers, but she had the bad luck of being married, and divorce was only possible by an act of parliament,

which was granted only in the rarest of care. cases. Between April and June, Caroline wrote to Melbourne, half despairing over her children, and half fuming at her husband. Her outrage reads, very modern. Quote, here is a man who was mad to marry me at 18, who turns me out of his house nine years afterwards, and inflicts vengeance as bitterly as he can, end quote. And the sharp knife of her right. And the sharp knife of her writer's pen is evident when she writes, Thank God everyone in the house hates him, so they'll tell me what's done.

But it wasn't entirely true that everyone hated her husband. So when spiteful George Norton sued the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, for criminal conversation with his wife, it wasn't at all certain that he would lose. The trial took place on June 22, 1836. It was a classic drizzly day in London, but the rumors came like a flood. Political cartoonist punned on Melbourne's family name, Lamb, to publish Lamboons in the papers. Wigs in Melbourne's party accused the Tories of bringing the suit for political purposes.

Pamphlets promised an extraordinary trial damages set at 10,000 pounds, three exclamation points. One more literary cameo, a 24-year-old Charles Dickens reported from the courtroom. The place was completely packed, the hot breath and sweat of the men in attendance mingled with the excitement in the air. They were going to hear salacious stories of the forbidden love that had sprung up between the famous literary beauty, Caroline Norton, and the prime minister himself. The crowd sat at the edge of their seats, their pulses racing, waiting for the scandalous details. But what the crowd heard was lackluster. The servants and former servants of the Norton household were the main witnesses, and all they could offer, by way of evidence, felt like innuendo at best.

Melbourne and Caroline closed the door when they were together. Sometimes her hair looked a little out of place. Sometimes she washed her hands. after his visits. Melbourne once wrote her a note that said, How are you, without first addressing her by name? The men of the jury found it as pathetically unconvincing as you might, listener. They took about a minute to decide against George Norton. The prosecution had proven only conversation of the regular non-criminal sort.

The observers went away disappointed out into the moonlight. Charles Dickens would later caricature the trial in his novel The Pickwick Papers. So Lord Melbourne had won the trial against George Norton. He had not legally committed adultery with Caroline Norton. That meant Caroline had won two, albeit vicariously. She was happy to emerge victorious, but the worst blow, after the loss of her children, was still to come, and it would come from Melbourne himself. He had always counseled her to stay with her husband,

to bear everything, as he put it. But around the trial, he went cold on her. She had loved him, however familial, romantic, consummated, or unconsumated, we might judge that love to be. But now that their relationship had public consequences, Melbourne seemed to be backing off. In a message that feels exactly like a woman today texting a man who used to care and just doesn't anymore, Caroline wrote, quote,

My heart sinks and chills at seeing how little I am to you. I am to be a childless mother for my supposed power to charm strangers, and yet the man whom I have been charming ever since I was 20 and 2, well, I beg pardon. I don't want to torment you. All I say is, worse women have been stood by. So Caroline had, through Melbourne, won a sensational trial.

But if she had some sense that it wasn't much of a victory, she was absolutely right. Caroline Norton was alone. After the trial, Caroline was publicly cleared of wrongdoing, but privately she was still the legal extension of her abuse. husband, and George Norton wasn't the type to keep his head held high. He had been publicly

humiliated by his wife after trying to publicly humiliate his wife. After the trial, he tried to change their son Willie's name to Charles, because God forbid their son share a first name with Lord Melbourne. But any and all pettiness would have been better than the cruelty George ultimately chose. He kept Caroline's children away from her. Her legal innocence didn't matter. She had been an object in the CrimCon trial anyway, not the defendant. She was collateral damage. That meant she had never really been cleared, not in George Norton's heart anyway. Caroline could not sue for custody. As biographer Antonia Frazier explicitly states, Caroline had no legal existence outside marriage. There was nothing she could do. But Caroline Norton was a writer,

no matter what, she could always write. So with strength and fortitude, I can only imagine, Caroline used her husband's own law books to study child custody. She wrote pamphlets, lobbying to change the laws, so that the mother could appeal for custody of her children up to age seven. And finally, in 1839, three years after the famous Crimcon trial, the law was passed. The infant custody bill represented the first time in English history that a married woman existed as her own legal entity. But it was a hollow victory. The law applied to England, Ireland and Wales, but not to Scotland, and Caroline's almost cartoonishly villainous husband, had the children in Scotland. The saddest part of the story comes next. Caroline had fought for the

rights of women and their children. She had loved her children with her whole heart. She had won a victory for other women but not for herself. And in 1842, when her youngest, Willie, was nine, he fell off his pony. A scrape that Caroline knew in her heart she would have cared for properly. But under her husband's carelessness, the severity of the injury progressed. Even George Norton had to finally acknowledge that their sweet boy was very, very sick. The moment that Caroline was called, she raced to her baby as fast as she could. I'm coming, she thought.

She tried to convey it to him across the miles. I'm coming. But her beloved youngest son was lying in bed when he died, calling for his mother, who was still on her way. After Willie's death, George Norton relented. a little. Caroline did get to see her sons, Fletcher, and Brin more often. She kept writing. She maintained a friendship with Lord Melbourne until his death in 1848. She spent time with Brin's children, her grandchildren. She cared for Fletcher until his death at age 30 in 1859. Caroline lobbied

for racial justice, for the disabled and for the poor. In 1873, the law was changed so mothers could appeal for custody of children up to the age of 16. And in 1875 at last, she was finally freed from her worst prison, marriage to George Norton. He died at age 74. By this point, Caroline was also in very ill health, but she wasn't going to let that stop her. At long last at the age of 69, she became the thing she had never really been before, a bride in love. In 1877, the once-famous dark-eyed widow, Caroline Norton, married Sir William Sterling Maxwell. She died three months later.

Nearly half a century after that, in 1925, the guardianship of infants act gave mothers full equality in custody proceedings. That's the sad story of Caroline Norton and her fight for legal recognition of married women, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear how Caroline made her way into Parliament after all. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body having its own program.

I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program.

I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who, we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When Caroline was involved with the legal system, she had no legal rights as a married woman.

She lost access to her children and the laws would not help her. She had no legal power. It was Caroline's confidant, Lord Melbourne, who was prime minister, and Caroline's husband, George Norton, who had been a member of parliament. But Caroline Norton's image was to hang above where they'd all stepped in the House of Lords. In 1841, artist Daniel MacLece was commissioned to portray the spirit of justice in a fresco for Parliament. When the time came to choose who would portray the figure at the center, whose image would be used as the model of justice, McLeese didn't hesitate. He chose Caroline Norton. He painted her in a picture. He painted her in white robes holding the scales of justice, looking up toward the heavens, surrounded by a woman

holding her child to her breast, an emancipated former slave, and a subdued man with a knife taken away. Caroline is the model of perfect serenity in the fresco, except if you look closely, she's not quite standing straight. Caroline Norton in the House of Lords has one hand slightly, insolently even, cocked, forever a little audacious, even as she balances the scales of justice. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio, and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and Rima Il K. Ali with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne.

Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks.

Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Thank you.