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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2015

Catherine Bishop
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Extract

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.

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Law and History Review , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 181 - 200
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 3

This 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.Footnote 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.”Footnote 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' agents in all of their legal or economic dealings. A married woman could conduct a business, but only as the agent of her husband. Any contracts she entered into, she did so on his behalf; any debts she contracted were actually his. If someone sued her, they sued her in conjunction with her husband. Therefore, her husband had ultimate control over any of her business dealings, and if he withdrew his support for her undertaking, any contracts she entered into were void. And if a husband went into debt, his creditors could turn to his wife's business profits for satisfaction.

However, in spite of these legal restrictions, married women were clearly present in the business world, many operating businesses apparently independently of their husbands: they advertised in newspapers, ordered supplies from creditors, and took on apprentices; they paid bills, collected debts, and were visible behind shop counters and bars, albeit with the knowledge that coverture could disrupt their business lives at any time. For many women, somewhat ironically perhaps, it was marriage that enabled them to start a business, their husbands providing the necessary capital or perhaps a shared business premises. Problems arose if a husband was absent, become insolvent, or drank or gambled the profits of his wife's business. This was when businesswomen found their conjugal status became an inconvenient obstacle in their business lives.

The presence of these women in the commercial colonial world has been obscured until recently, partly because of the assumptions and priorities of historians and partly because they are hidden in the existing records. Even feminist historians have sidelined these women because of their emphasis first on the ways in which women's participation in civil society was restricted by the Victorian ideology of domesticity, and second, by their focus on women in employment rather than those who were self-employed.Footnote 6 There has also been, quite appropriately, a concern to value nineteenth century colonial women's contribution through their domestic roles.Footnote 7 Nevertheless, recent scholarship from the United States, Canada, and Britain, as well as my own work on New Zealand and Australia, has argued for a reassessment of women's roles in nineteenth century economies, suggesting that, although the dominant rhetoric might have placed women within the home, the economic realities of life for populations composed of predominantly working class and tradespeople meant that women were active participants in the economy.Footnote 8

Focusing on NSW between 1830 and 1870, this article investigates how married businesswomen negotiated the restrictions imposed by the laws of coverture. It uses as a main source the court reports in the Sydney Morning Herald, which employed legally trained reporters, and is a respected source for legal historians.Footnote 9 The court cases involving businesswomen and coverture were varied, but many involved women whose husbands were absent or insolvent. The difficulties faced by deserted wives who ran businesses exemplify to the extreme the issues faced by married businesswomen more generally: that they were vulnerable to their husband's creditors and unable to act in court on their own. Deserted wives became an increasingly visible problem in the 1850s; legally bound by the laws of coverture as married women, and yet financially self-reliant, their ability to operate in the business world was severely restricted. Colonial legislators had to meet the challenge of ensuring that this particular niche that such women filled remained viable and, in particular, provided the means for deserted wives to support themselves without being burdens on colonial society. At the same time, family stability and patriarchy had to be preserved. Public debates of the 1850s were dominated by issues of self-government and political citizenship, which were seen as masculine.Footnote 10 Colonial politicians were concerned to maintain what historians have called a “pleasant patriarchal domesticity,” reflected in debates about working hours, suffrage, and women's property rights.Footnote 11 Deserted wives were becoming an increasingly visible crack in this ideal society. This article, then, also considers the NSW legislative response to the problem posed by deserted wives, within the context of the legal restraints of coverture, as a case study of a broader response throughout the British world.

Sydney, by the middle of the nineteenth century, was a well-established metropolis, a busy port and rapidly growing commercial center, with a population by 1850 of just under 50,000, and by 1870 of 200,000.Footnote 12 Much of its economic activity was based around family-owned-and-run small businesses rather than large-scale factories and department stores, both of which developed later in the nineteenth century. NSW had begun life as a penal colony in 1788, although transportation of convicted felons ceased in 1840. The colony was in the process of remaking itself as a respectable settler society; self-government was granted in 1855. And although the imbalance of the sexes in the Australian colonies was greatly publicized, the lack of women being much bemoaned, by 1850 this was not the case for Sydney, where the numbers of men and women were comparatively equal.Footnote 13

Coverture Laws: from England to New South Wales

It might seem as if coverture, with the rest of English common law, simply spread throughout the British settler world, existing alive and well until the dawn of the twentieth century. The comparatively late enactment of married women's property legislation in the Australasian colonies would even suggest that coverture was even more entrenched there than in England. In fact, far from being “alive and well,” coverture in NSW was contested, as indeed it was elsewhere in the Empire, including in the metropole. As Lee Holcombe points out, as early as the 1920s, historian A. V. Dicey had shown that by the latter years of the nineteenth century, coverture was becoming increasingly problematic in Britain as numbers of married women joined the workforce.Footnote 14 Dicey and Holcombe follow many other historians of women's work in tending to focus on women as employees.Footnote 15 By shifting our gaze to women who were running small businesses, we can see that coverture was actually under threat long before the boom in the female workforce in the last 20 years of the century.

This was true across much of the British settler world and in England itself. Challenges to coverture law were not new.Footnote 16 NSW had the added complication of its history as a penal colony, which posed some unusual if not unique challenges to English common law, as Bruce Kercher has described.Footnote 17 The legal position of both men and women was complicated by the fact that a large proportion of the population, particularly in the first 60 years of the colony, were convicts or ticket-of-leave holders, or were married to them. Ticket-of-leave holders could live relatively free lives although still under sentence. Convicts who had been sentenced to death but had had their sentences transmuted to transportation were subject to felony attaint. This meant that they could not own property, sue, or give evidence in court. Very quickly, however, the courts in NSW adopted a pragmatic approach. Convicts were allowed to sue and be sued from the establishment of the colony. Over the following years, aspects of the law of attaint were introduced to NSW, but there was what Kercher has described as a “flexible” approach to the adoption of English laws. This flexibility ensured the colony's economic survival, which required the economic participation of convicts as well as free men.

Married women in NSW fell into two categories with quite different legal status: those married to attainted men and those married to free men. Wives of attainted men were regarded under common law as femmes sole, able to conduct business and own property in their own names. Therefore, wives of convicts in NSW were granted hotel licenses and land grants in their own names. This special status for convicts' wives was always temporary: at the end of a man's sentence, his wife reverted to being a femme covert. Precisely because of the restrictions applied to their husbands, they somewhat paradoxically enjoyed freedoms not available to other women. They could also enter into contracts and sue in court, and did so. Nevertheless the presence of married women as litigants in court disturbed some judges, such as Justice Willis, who, in Marcus v. Healey in 1840, questioned “how far a married woman under the control of her husband, although under legal disability to sue, could have a locus standi in court.”Footnote 18 In this case, Mr Healey's lawyer had not appealed to coverture to defend his client against the suit of storekeeper Mrs. Marcus, and rightly so, for Mrs. Marcus' husband was a ticket of leave holder, suggesting that she was not subject to coverture. Justice Willis was forced to find for the plaintiff, in spite of his discomfort.Footnote 19 Courts in NSW would struggle with the legal status of convicts' wives, with some apparently contradictory results that reflected various legal technicalities.Footnote 20 In 1834, Anne Noble, the wife of an attainted convict, bought land from the profits of her successful business. Before her husband's attaint expired she conveyed the land in trust to trustees for the benefit of her children. Unfortunately for her clever plan, this conveyance was declared invalid by the courts, which decided that because her status as a femme sole was only temporary (for the period of her husband's sentence), she could not sell land. Therefore, any profits or property she had earned independently of her attainted husband were instantly released into his hands as soon as he was pardoned.Footnote 21 In contrast, in 1847 in Doe dem Tugwell v. Farrell, it was found that Jane Farrell was a femme sole and could convey her land because her husband had been a prisoner at the time she had been granted the land by the Crown.Footnote 22

Unlike women married to attainted men, wives of free men in NSW were technically subject to the law of coverture. Nevertheless, the implementation of the law, as for wives of convicts, was not necessarily clear-cut or consistent. Hilary Golder and Bruce Kercher have investigated the extent of a married woman's exercise of legal power in early NSW. They concluded that although technically subsumed within their husbands' identities, married women could act as legal and economically independent citizens as long as the rest of society colluded in the fiction that they could do so. Bruce Kercher suggests that this was probably facilitated in the early days of NSW by the presence of the wives of convict men running their own businesses. It would have seemed odd to deny the wife of a free man, surely higher in status, the same rights and privileges as the wife of a convict.Footnote 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.Footnote 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. Coverture scholars have begun to look at married women in business, although much of the emphasis has been on the eighteenth century. Richard Chused, James Oldham, and Karen Pearlston have suggested that in England, numbers of cases illustrated a relaxation in coverture under Chief Justice Mansfield in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, although his successor, Lord Kenyon, reversed this tendency near 1800.Footnote 25 Nevertheless, recent work by Nicola Philips and Alison Kay on women in business has highlighted later examples in England of married businesswomen being treated as femmes sole, and in London, the local borough custom allowing married women to trade independently from their husbands as femmes sole continued throughout the nineteenth century, reflecting the centrality of women to particular niches of commercial life in a growing city.Footnote 26 Margot Finn has shown the ways in which married women consumers worked around the restrictions of coverture in the small claims courts in provincial England into the 1860s. She used the rather appealing description of the law of coverture existing in “a state of suspended animation.”Footnote 27 The multiple court systems in England (unlike in colonial NSW) meant that married women in business potentially had different options for redress, although further research into the middle of the nineteenth century remains to be conducted.

Beyond England, coverture was also being manipulated. Married women in Quebec could trade independently throughout the nineteenth century, and from 1852, Californian wives could apply to be treated as femmes sole in their separate business dealings whether or not they were cohabiting with their husbands.Footnote 28 In some other American states, the principle of femme sole trading had been established in the previous century.Footnote 29

In 1854, a newspaper report in NSW described the London custom that “a married woman may carry on the trade in the city as ‘feme sole’, without the husband being liable for her debts,” as “rather curious.”Footnote 30 In NSW, it may well have been regarded as “curious” because, in spite of the clear presence of married women in business in NSW, there was no legal basis untill 1858 for a woman married to a free man to trade as a femme sole. The only exception allowed in NSW was if the woman was living apart from her husband and had an agreed, formal Deed of Separation.Footnote 31 For other wives in business, coverture affected their lives in several ways, subjecting them to the will and whimsies of their husbands, underscoring the way in which the law was an instrument of patriarchy, albeit one that was under challenge.

Coverture and Business

Coverture first meant that wives' businesses were vulnerable to their husbands' creditors. Anne de Metz ran a successful ladies' school in Cleveland House in Surry Hills in Sydney with her six daughters for 10 years until 1843, when her husband became insolvent. The family lost their school because the business belonged to Andrew de Metz under the law of coverture. When the school reopened, it was in the names of the Misses de Metz rather than their mother. Perhaps they were determined not to expose their business to the vagaries of their father's commercial dealings.Footnote 32

Most married businesswomen, such as Mrs. de Metz, seldom managed to avoid the problem of a husband's creditors. This did not stop them trying. One who succeeded was the opportunistic Mrs. Robertson in 1855. She immigrated to Sydney with Mr. Robertson, an unsatisfactory husband who was described in court as a “drunken dissipated fellow who became insolvent.”Footnote 33 Mrs. Robertson had established a successful dairying business and happily paid her husband's one way fare to California. Unfortunately, he later returned, along with creditors who made claim to eleven cows and some furniture, which she said she had bought with her own money. Under the law of coverture, this claim of it being her “own money” carried no weight; as a married woman her property was her husband's. In order to prove that she was indeed a femme sole, she claimed that her marriage to Mr. Robertson was invalid, as she had committed bigamy, being already the wife of a Mr. Marshall in England. Her credibility was questioned somewhat when it was revealed that she had represented herself as Robertson's legal wife in a previous case, when she had been sued for wages by an employee. In this case, a plea of coverture had worked in her favor because as a married woman she could not be sued in her own name. Nevertheless, in 1855 her somewhat extreme strategy against Mr Robertson worked: she retained her property and apparently also avoided prosecution for bigamy. However, Judge Alfred Stephen “commented in very strong terms on the immorality of the plaintiff's conduct.”Footnote 34 Interestingly, no matter to whom she was legally married, Mrs. Marshall/Robertson was still a married woman and if a bigamist, she was also a criminal. As a married woman and a criminal she had dubious status as a litigant. Her success is an indication of a degree of female agency in manipulating the system. Mrs. Robertson was unusual, however; most wives were forced to relinquish any profits or property relating to their businesses to their husbands' creditors on demand.

Second, coverture meant that married women could not legally enter into contracts in their own names. They did, however, and their businesses depended upon their capacity to make contracts. Married women running their own millinery and dressmaking businesses took on female apprentices, and other businesswomen entered into contracts when they ordered supplies from wholesalers. However, none of these contracts was enforceable in law unless the husband had signed them or the wife could be shown to be acting as his agent, which was sometimes difficult to prove. Therefore, in 1846, when Sydney straw bonnet maker Mary Gates tried to reclaim an absconding apprentice, the opposing lawyer held successfully that as Gates had been a married woman when she signed the apprenticeship indentures, her signature was worthless and the indenture invalid.Footnote 35 The apprentice was free to go. Thus, although in the general run of business there were many apprenticeships and contracts made and honoured by married women and by those with whom they contracted, if challenged in court, they were unenforceable, unless backed up by their husbands.

Third, because of coverture, married women were unable to proceed in court in their own names against debtors. Businesswomen had no way of legally collecting any money owed to them, relying on their husbands to do so for them. Problems arose if those husbands were uncooperative or absent. Elizabeth Macarthur, the wife of one of the richest men in the colony, ran her family's businesses successfully and apparently without challenge as her husband's agent for several years while he was in England, but other women without her social position and economic clout could find it more difficult.Footnote 36 Absent husbands could not add their names to a suit. And it was difficult sometimes for a wife to prove that she had her absent husband's consent to act as his agent.Footnote 37

On the other hand, married women could and did make use the coverture defense when it suited them. For example, if a dissatisfied employee sued for wages, married businesswomen, could, like canny Mrs Robertson, plead coverture. The same was true when a supplier sued for payment of a debt. This was clearly beneficial in the first instance, with a debt being cunningly avoided.Footnote 38 Ultimately, however, such results made it more difficult for married women to operate in the economic world. This was emphasized in 1866 in Smith v. Barron by I. Newton Watt, resident magistrate in Southland in New Zealand, where similar coverture laws prevailed. Shopkeeper Hannah Barron pleaded coverture when sued for the cost of a wrongly delivered bag of sugar. “She was a married woman, and ... her husband should have been sued and not her.” Her case was dismissed on the grounds of coverture. Although she won the battle, she may have lost the war, as the resident magistrate commented disapprovingly that “it appeared that she was carrying on a business independent of her husband who was on the West Coast; her plea would render people cautious in trusting her.”Footnote 39

Those dealing with married businesswomen may well have been extra cautious. A married woman needed to be either absolutely reliable in her dealings or very clearly acting on behalf of her husband. Similarly, her husband's financial reputation influenced the way suppliers and creditors dealt with a married woman's business. They were well aware that her business was exposed to his behavior in ways that a husband's business was not so vulnerable to a spendthrift wife, the doctrine of necessaries notwithstanding.Footnote 40

The ambiguous status of married businesswomen was made worse because the application of coverture laws was not straightforward. NSW might have had no formal legal recognition of femme sole trading until 1858; however, as in earlier cases involving convicts, and reflecting widespread practice throughout the settler world, colonial judges adapted English law to suit colonial priorities or exigencies. Generally, the principle of coverture was upheld in court, and cases revolved around whether or not a wife had been authorized to act as her husband's agent. This could be unclear, and all the power lay with the husband. So it was that a promissory note drawn up by Jane Hedges in Sydney in 1833 during her mariner husband's absence was upheld because her husband had assured the bearer that “he permitted his wife to draw bills while he was at sea.”Footnote 41 Elizabeth Fowler was not so fortunate, because her husband was not cooperative. In Hearson v. Brown in 1832, the court decided that a promissory note endorsed by Fowler was invalid because her husband said he had not authorized her action. This was in spite of the fact that Elizabeth Fowler had been living apart from her husband and supporting herself for many years.Footnote 42 Fowler's independent business dealings were threatened by the ultimate legal reality that her money was not her own.

However, sometimes coverture was ignored by the court: perhaps, given the extent to which women were acting on their own behalf in business, courts sometimes had trouble pretending that they could not. In 1841 Judge William Montagu Manning ignored coverture when in court he accepted the validity of an I.O.U. given by a tenant to his married landlady for some furniture in the house he was renting, even though the landlady's estranged husband disputed it. This went against the principle of coverture, “that all contracts made by [a wife] without [a husband's] authority or consent, express or implied, are absolutely void.”Footnote 43 In 1867, Jane Crozier pleaded coverture when charged with adding an illegal veranda to her public house in Kiama, but she—not her husband—was convicted anyway, against the principle of coverture. Nevertheless, although her defense failed, the court conceded that there was no way that the imposed fine of £20 could be enforced. As a married woman, Crozier technically had no property of her own with which to pay, and her husband was not available to be charged.Footnote 44

The court effectively recognised Crozier as a femme sole, despite her having a living, if frequently absent, husband. The likely reason was that Crozier was accustomed to using the local courts. In 1860, as the recent widow of John Hetherington (and therefore a femme sole) and the official licensee of the Brighton Hotel, she had been sued for debt and had herself chased creditors through the court. After her remarriage to Henry Crozier later that year, the license of the hotel officially transferred to him and Jane Crozier became legally a femme covert. But in 1862, both Henry and Jane Crozier appeared in court to jointly sue a debtor. The inclusion of Jane Crozier's name on the court documents was in keeping with coverture principles, under which married women could sue and be sued with their husbands, but nonetheless it was unusual. In most other cases, such as the Spiers insolvency that opened this article, only the husband's name was on the court papers. In 1865, Jane Crozier again appeared in court and was dealt with as a femme sole. She was acknowledged as an agent for George Grey. Grey was the official licensee of the Fermanangh Hotel, but Jane Crozier was responsible for running the business, which the court appeared to recognize. In March 1867, Jane Crozier sued the Kiama Bench of Magistrates in her own name and was herself pursued successfully for a debt in 1869. Therefore, throughout her second marriage, despite being legally a femme covert, Jane Crozier had behaved (and was treated) as a femme sole.Footnote 45

Deserted Wives and Legislation

Crozier, like most women in these cases, was living apart from her husband but was still married to him. Her husband was still legally responsible for her conduct and her debts, her business was vulnerable to his creditors, and he could reappear at any time and claim any profits she had made. Deserted wives posed a particular and visible problem in the colonies. There was no Poor Law, as there was in England. How such wives subsequently supported themselves is not always clear. Some, such as Jane Crozier, ran businesses, others moved on to other men, and some seem to have reconciled with their husbands, and many were forced to turn to charity or prostitution. Deserted wives who ran businesses were vulnerable to their absent husband's creditors and were hamstrung in court; of all married businesswomen, they were hindered the most by coverture laws. Importantly, they were seen as deserving support because they were providing for their children. A legislative response became imperative in order to avoid these women becoming a burden on society, and perhaps also to recognize the commercial reality of married women operating businesses.

NSW legislation relating to married women's property and deserted wives in the 1840s and 1850s was not created in a vacuum. It was heavily influenced by legislation in England, and it is notable that comparable legislation was introduced in New Zealand and in other Australian colonies at similar times. Laws were not simply transferred from the metropole to the colonies, however, and each colony put its own mark on the legislation. In New Zealand, for example, deserting fathers had to pay extra for “half-caste” children, to allow for their integration into white New Zealand society; no such provision was apparent in the Australian colonies, perhaps indicating the relative visibility and political clout of indigenous populations.Footnote 46

The NSW legislation was motivated by two main colonial priorities: facilitating land transfer and family stability. Scholars in Australia have investigated the way in which the desire to make land transfers more straightforward led to the gradual erosion of dower rights and to laws allowing women to transfer land to their husbands.Footnote 47 This was less important for married businesswomen, who were more affected by laws passed to ameliorate the situation of deserted wives. These laws were influenced by the desire to maintain family stability and to ensure that these wives and their children did not become a burden on society. An Act to Provide for the Maintenance of Deserted Wives and Children was passed in 1840 in NSW. This meant that a woman could apply for a court order forcing her husband to maintain her.Footnote 48 This was important for those women unable to support themselves, but it provided no protection for a businesswoman at the mercy of a returning husband or his creditors.

The only way for a businesswoman to avoid this was to get a Deed of Separation. This was not necessarily easy. It not only required her husband's agreement but also ended his responsibility to maintain her. The wife then became a femme sole in the eyes of the law. Elizabeth Cummins managed to obtain just such a Deed of Separation in 1843 so that she could continue to run the Lemon Tree Hotel in Phillip Street in Sydney “on her sole account, free from the debts or interference of her husband.” It was fortunate that Robert Cummins agreed to this before he left for Valparaiso in 1844.Footnote 49 If not, she would still have been a femme covert in the eyes of the law. As a woman married to a free man she could not have held a publican's licence without the Deed of Separation.Footnote 50 Cummins was unusual; few departing husbands paused long enough to put such a deed in place.

This was certainly the case in 1849 when several Sydney publicans joined the ranks of the forty-niners and went to the Californian goldfields, leaving their wives to run their hotels. Initially and practically this was not a problem, particularly as in many cases the real publican was the wife, who had often held the licence as a widow before remarrying. The absence of husbands became a problem in March 1850, when licences were due for renewal. Some wives applied for the hotel licences in the name of their husbands; these were refused because the husband was absent from the colony. Others applied in their own names, but being married women, they were refused.Footnote 51 The lawyer representing these women was George Robert (Bob) Nichols, who was also a member of the legislative assembly, and not unfamiliar personally with the provisions of the Deserted Wives Act.Footnote 52 Nichols presented a petition to the Legislative Assembly and then introduced a bill to allow married women whose husbands were temporarily absent from the colony to be granted hotel licences in their own names. The Legislative Assembly rejected the bill, primarily because members did not want to be seen to be giving advantage to men who had deserted their families and gone to California, an issue that was something of a sore point at the time. For some, the situation was resolved with the return of their husbands, and one woman followed her husband to California, although other women lost their licences and found themselves without a living. After this, the issue of married female publicans dropped off the political agenda, but the problem of deserted wives did not.

In 1856, Nichols introduced legislation dealing more generally with deserted wives. He suggested an amendment to the 1840 Act allowing wives to apply on their own (rather than, as previously, relying on a husband's agreement to a Deed of Separation) for maintenance. Desertion would be assumed after the husband had been absent for a certain time and a wife would be able to claim desertion if she had been “compelled to leave her husband's residence under reasonable apprehension of danger to her person or under other circumstances which may reasonably justify her withdrawal.”Footnote 53 Nichols became ill and died, and his bill foundered. It was given new life in 1857 by Dr Henry Gratton Douglass, who introduced the most significant clause, which enable deserted wives to protect their earnings from a returning spouse or his creditors. Without sacrificing her errant husband's responsibility to maintain her, a deserted wife could apply for a court order to be treated as a femme sole in all transactions except, significantly, those involving real estate. Like the wife of an attainted man, her right to sell land was restricted. Husbands retained their common law responsibility for any contracts their wives entered into. The wife's legal status reverted instantly to that of femme covert if the couple cohabited again.Footnote 54 The Act to Amend the Act for the Maintenance of Deserted Wives and Children (NSW 1858 Amendment) was passed in 1858.

These moves in NSW coincided with attempts elsewhere to address the problems posed by increased global mobility, particularly of men, in the gold rush era. The NSW Amendment was similar to the 1857 English Matrimonial Causes Act, although the English Act was primarily concerned with divorce, which the NSW law cleverly avoided mentioning. Hilary Golder has argued convincingly that the passing of the 1858 NSW Amendment deliberately hijacked attempts to pass divorce legislation in NSW.Footnote 55 It certainly reflected the colony's priority of maintaining family stability, because it focused on ensuring that deserted wives and children could support themselves, while retaining the possibility that a husband would return, rather than encouraging the permanent dissolution of marriages.Footnote 56 Colonial legislators wished to promote the idea of a respectable family-based society, ideally with a breadwinning man providing for and governing his family, but deserted wives and children were an uncomfortable and visible reality. NSW had no Poor Law and had to find alternative solutions, and supporting women in small business by ensuring they could protect their earnings was one of those. The other Australasian colonies made similar provisions for deserted wives, with South Australia alone introducing divorce legislation along similar lines to that of England.Footnote 57

Significantly, although in England a married women's property bill was being debated in 1856, the idea that married women generally should have property rights did not surface in NSW.Footnote 58 The English Married Women's Property Bill was primarily aimed at deserted wives, but provided for property rights for all married women. It was never passed. In fact, just as Hilary Golder argued that NSW avoided divorce law with the 1858 Amendment, one could suggest that England itself cleverly sidestepped the issue of married women's property rights by, in 1857, enacting divorce legislation. This legislation incorporated femme sole status for deserted wives, neatly removing the main impetus of the previous Married Women's Property Bill.

In NSW, probably the most important change in the 1858 NSW Amendment was that under the old Deed of Separation, a married woman could gain femme sole status only with her husband's assent and only if she eschewed his duty to maintain her and her children. After 1858, she could sue both for maintenance and for the right to protect her income from her deserting husband's creditors, and she could do so on her own. The legislation passed during this period in NSW was careful to avoid giving wives the right to leave their husbands merely because they wished to, and then demand support. The legal strength of the marriage bond and power of a husband within it remained overwhelming. As a judge in an 1863 case noted, “no amount of mere incompatibility of temper or even harshness of language and manner would justify a wife in leaving her husband and her home. Nothing, indeed, but a well-grounded apprehension of actual personal violence.”Footnote 59 If a woman left her husband without what was deemed to be reasonable cause, he could at any time claim custody of children and any property she had obtained, as well as the right to cohabit with her.Footnote 60 There were numerous advertisements placed by husbands eschewing responsibility for the support of their wives who had apparently departed the marital home without due cause. Interestingly, there was also the occasional advertisement placed by wives declaring they would not pay their husband's debts. Such advertisements had no standing in law until the Amendment in 1858, when women were quick to take advantage of the new legislation, the rows of names in the Register of Orders under the Deserted Wives Act growing quickly.

The NSW 1858 Amendment essentially enabled those women able to run businesses to survive a husband's departure.Footnote 61 Jane Craddock was an early applicant; her husband Hugh was “an habitual drunkard” and violent. After their separation, Jane Craddock ran a boarding house and then a servants' registry office in Sydney, and a contemporary observer described her as “a respectable and obliging woman in her business.”Footnote 62 This association of female respectability with business rather than domesticity is significant, indicating that separate sphere ideology was by no means unchallenged.

Conclusion

Far from being merely wives and mothers, ensconced in the domestic sphere, married women in colonial cities were also active in the economic sphere in small business, in spite of the legal disability of coverture. A wife relied on her husband's cooperation—as well as on his sobriety and solvency—in order to successfully run a business. Court cases revolving around coverture throughout the middle of the nineteenth century in NSW illustrate both the restrictions married businesswomen suffered and the ways that they, the courts, and society generally negotiated those restrictions. Outcomes of cases did not always appear consistent, indicative perhaps of a “flexible” approach to the application of English law in what had been a penal colony. But it was also a matter of a court system having to reconcile legal theory with commercial reality. This study of NSW cases illustrates that the ways in which English businesswomen dealt with coverture in the eighteenth century continued into the nineteenth century and beyond the shores of England.

Coverture was under threat throughout the settler world, with the participation of women in the economy and the increasingly visible issue of deserted wives, who were unable to support themselves successfully under existing laws. Married women's property rights were vigorously debated in the metropole, but in NSW, the focus was on ensuring the stability and self-sufficiency of families, with mothers recognized as financially responsible in the absence of fathers. Legislation in the 1850s allowed deserted wives to operate as femmes sole, with NSW finally joining other jurisdictions in providing formal recognition of an existing practice.

This investigation of NSW suggests that married women in business were an accepted phenomenon in colonial cities and in the metropole, and that they negotiated with coverture laws well into the nineteenth century, eventually provoking a legislative response. Most married women worked either with their husbands, or with their husbands' approval and support, generating joint income for their family unit. Nevertheless they, along with those with whom they did business, were well aware that, legally, their money was not their own.

References

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2. Recent international scholarship has uncovered their presence. See discussion later in this article.

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31. See Kercher, Debt, Seduction, 76.

32. Miss DeMetz taught until 1868. The Australian, December 30, 1833, 3; SMH, November 3 1843, 3, January 2, 1868, 1; and Fords Sydney Commercial Directory for the Year 1851 (Sydney: W & F Ford, 1851)Google Scholar. Another example was Mary Scrutton's school, which was affected by her husband's insolvencies. “Robert Law Scrutton, Surry Hills, Clerk Insolvency,” SCIF, January 10, 1844, SRNSW, NRS 13654, 01153; “Robert Law Scrutton, Sydney, Accountant Insolvency,” SCIF, January 3, 1848, SRNSW, NRS 13654, 01716.

33. Marshall v. Cardwell, SMH, November 13, 1855, 4; and Empire, November 13, 1855, 4.

34. SMH, November 13, 1855, 4.

35. Sydney Chronicle, September 5, 1846, 2. Similarly, Becke and Another v. Hopson and Another, SMH, July 7, 1864, 8. For contrast, see Ivey v. Kingsbury, The Australian, September 3, 1846, 3.

36. Macarthur probably had legal documents naming her as her husband's agent. Bruce Kercher notes that wives with absent husbands were able to sue in their own names in the early years of the colony, but this was not so by the 1830s. Kercher, An Unruly Child, 50.

37. This was also evident in neighboring New Zealand, where Mrs. Goodbraid and Mrs. Frost both failed in court purely because of absent husbands. Daily Southern Cross, January 30, 1867, 4; November 8, 1867, 4.

38. See Durand v. Williams, SMH, July 10, 1862, 2; July 11, 1862, 3. The coverture defense could be a delaying tactic. See Salway v. Jones, SMH, February 12, 1863, 5.

39. Southland Times, August 1, 1866, 3. Barron was a businesswoman and mother of Joseph Ward, New Zealand prime minister (1906–1912). Judith Bassett, “Barron, Hannah Ward – Biography”, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2b7/1 (June 1, 2013). See also Terrett v. Cockerill, SMH, July 7, 1855, 3.

40. This allowed a wife to run up credit in her husband's name for items deemed ‘necessary’, which could be a contested notion. See Erica Rappaport, ‘“A Husband and His Wife's Dresses”: Consumer Credit and the Debtor Family in England, 1864–1914’ in The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, ed. Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 163–87.

41. Sydney Herald (SH), March 11, 1833, 2; SG, April 5, 1832, 2; and The Australian, January 6, 1834, 4.

42. Hearson v. Brown 1832, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales; SH, October 1, 1832, 1. See also “The Glorious Uncertainty of the Law,” SG, July 11, 1835, 3; and Lehane v. Pendray, SMH, September 29, 1842, 3; October 8, 1842, 2; November 18, 1845, 3; August 5, 1846, 2.

43. SH, April 17, 1841, 2. See also Australian Trust Company v. Berry, SMH, October 14, 1856, 2; McCartney v. Dieckman, SMH, September 21, 1849, 2; and Paling v. Cox, SMH, September 14, 1864, 2.

44. SMH, June 7, 1867, 5.

45. As Jane Hetherington: Illawarra Mercury, January 6, 1860, 2; June 15, 1860, 4; As Jane Crozier: Examiner (Kiama) March 11, 1862, 2; June 17, 1862, 2; July 8, 1862, 2; Kiama Independent and Shoalhaven Advertiser, March 30, 1865, 2; April 26, 1866, 2; February 21, 1867, 2; March 7 1867, 2; March 21, 1867, 3; May 28, 1868, 2; August 19, 1869, 2; and SMH June 7, 1867, 5. On December 9, 1869 Jane Crozier is listed in the Register of Orders under the Deserted Wives Act, 1858–1948, SRNSW, 13476 (Register of Orders).

46. An Ordinance for the Support of Destitute Families and Illegitimate Children, New Zealand (October 26, 1846).

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48. Levels of maintenance were not specified, and it was not clear how the orders were to be enforced. Barlow v. Barlow, SMH, February 12, 1845, 3; Barker v. Hutchinson, SMH, November 19, 1847, 2; and Anthony v. Jones, SMH, February 17, 1858, 3.

49. SMH, October 21, 1843, 1. See also Jane Coleman (poulterer), SMH, January 16, 1855, 1; and Ellen Carroll (butcher). SMH, June 7, 1860, 1.

50. A few exceptions included Margaret Seymour, SMH, April 21, 1854, 5; April 27, 1855, 5; and anonymous case, SMH, November 4, 1846, 3.

51. SMH, September 22, 1849, 3; May 6 1850, 2; May 6, 1850, 2; August 28, 1850, 3; March 24, 1851, 2; June 8, 1850, 4.

52. G.P. Walsh, “Nichols, George Robert (Bob) (1809–1857),” National Centre of Biography, Australian National University http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nichols-george-robert-bob-4296/text6957.

53. An Act to Amend the Act for the Maintenance of Deserted Wives and Children, New South Wales (August 25, 1858), para. 6.

54. Ibid., para. 4, 5. See Clark v. Hart, SMH, November 25, 1865, 4. See also the Australian Mutual Provident Society Incorporation Act (1857), which protected women's policies from their husbands, SMH, October 26, 1850, 2; March 5, 1857, 4. See also debates about legislation, SMH, June 23, 1858, 4; June 26, 1858, 5; July 31, 1858, 5.

55. Golder, Hilary, Divorce in Nineteenth Century New South Wales (Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

56. Comments by members of the Legislative Council indicated concern that marriages not be permanently dissolved. See, for example, SMH, November 14, 1857, 5.

57. The uniqueness of the South Australian case is interesting, and possibly reflects the strong nonconformist presence. South Australia was also the first colony to grant women the vote.

58. See Holcombe, Wives and Property, chap. 4, 5.

59. SMH, June 2, 1863, 3; June 3, 1863, 5.

60. For custody, see Atkinson v. Barton 1841, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899. See also Britcher v. Britcher, SMH, February 14, 1866, 2; May 19, 1866, 5; Empire, January 23, 1874, 3; Register of Orders. For violent husband returning, see Margaret Cunningham, SMH, December 20, 1856, 4.

61. See Register of Orders under the Deserted Wives Act, 1858–1948, SRNSW, 13476 (Register of Orders).

62. SMH, June 1, 1843, 3; June 10, 1864, 1; January 6, 1869, 1; February 22, 1871, 8; Ex parte Craddock, SMH, November 9, 1858, 2; George Boyle White (transcribed by Jenny McCarthy and Les Dalton), Diary, 1875, SLNSW, CY4700, May 21 1875; and “Jane Craddock, Bourke Street Sydney Insolvency,” SCIF, 1864, SRNSW, NRS 13654, 06491. For other examples of businesswomen who took advantage of the legislation, such as Frances Cowell, Margaret Allison, Goodlet Chauncy and Elizabeth Bene, see Bishop, ‘Commerce Was a Woman’, 2012, Chapter 4, especially 202 ff.