Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T07:29:43.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Divorce in Court, 1857–1922

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2020

Diane Urquhart
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
Get access

Summary

Those of Irish domicile or lacking a permanent home in England or Wales were barred from the divorce court, but parliamentary divorce’s noxious reputation encouraged some Irish petitioners to develop means to circumvent its expense and publicity. Various strategies such as renting a house and paying rates in England were deployed to access the divorce court. This chapter samples Irish petitioners who divorced in court both legally and surreptitiously. A covert court divorce could invalidate second marriages, bastardise issue and contest marriage settlements. The late-nineteenth-century court-based divorces of domiciled Irishmen Colonel Sinclair and Colonel Malone were the most widely publicised of these cases. The legitimacy of their divorces was questioned, and problems arose regarding marriage settlements. The court was therefore increasingly rigorous about testing domicile; a rule that all divorce court petitioners would have to swear English domicile and falsification would bar the proceedings was introduced. However, although domicile was more stringently tested, Irish cases were presented to the divorce court with an increased regularity in the early twentieth century.

Type
Chapter
Information
Irish Divorce
A History
, pp. 123 - 130
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×