Timeline for Were women the property of men prior to 1919 in the UK?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
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| Nov 4, 2018 at 23:35 | comment | added | Jules | ... it were actual common practice to prevent a married woman having her own choice of name (and I see no presented evidence that this actually happened), the doctrine of Coverture died in the 18th-19th century, long before the 20th century time frame discussed in the question. | |
| Nov 4, 2018 at 23:33 | comment | added | Jules | @LangLangC - That article may be overstating the issue, due to a common misunderstanding: "While it was once assumed that married women had little or no access to legal recourse, as a result of coverture, [... more recent studies ...] have argued that 'there has been a tendency to overplay the extent to which coverture applied' [...] coverture, ... [a 1777] author ... concluded, was the product of foreign Norman invasion in the eleventh century—not, as Blackstone would have it, a time-tested 'English' legal practice." source. That said, even if ... | |
| Nov 4, 2018 at 12:18 | comment | added | LаngLаngС | @Jules "In the past, a woman in England would assume her new husband's family name (or surname) after marriage; usually she was compelled to do so under coverture laws." | |
| Nov 4, 2018 at 10:10 | history | edited | Jos | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 4, 2018 at 6:57 | comment | added | Jules | @LangLangC - that legal option existed for a long time prior to 1919. Since at the latest 1235 the law in England has been that your name is whatever you are known by, and that therefore to not change her name upon marriage, a woman would simply have to make sure that the majority of people continued to use her original name. Now, due to force of custom, she might have found that difficult, but there was no legal reason it wasn't possible. | |
| Nov 4, 2018 at 2:39 | history | edited | Jos | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 3, 2018 at 21:42 | comment | added | David Richerby | As the Wikipedia article you link explains, it is very misleading to claim that "Slavery was abolished in 1833 in England." The courts had already rules in 1772 that the concept of owning a human being had no basis in English law, and the Slave Trade Act (1807) had already made it illegal to buy or sell slaves anywhere in the Empire. The 1833 Act abolished slavery throughout the Empire, but it had long been illegal in England. (Wikipedia claims since 1102 but it's not very well sourced.) | |
| Nov 3, 2018 at 10:33 | vote | accept | Jonathan | ||
| Nov 3, 2018 at 9:58 | comment | added | Jonathan | Slavery in this context was for people in the colonies, outside the UK. Inside the UK, were there slaves or indentured servants? Also, I feel that the marriage/property law was much more a rule for the aristocracy until the industrial revolution came where more people owned homes. | |
| Nov 3, 2018 at 9:48 | comment | added | LаngLаngС | Where it was custom to take the name, it usually still is. And still the default, custom wise. Only that a legal option was added to choose an alternative to this default? | |
| Nov 3, 2018 at 9:44 | history | answered | Jos | CC BY-SA 4.0 |