Hapless Husbands and Wandering Wives

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Pen and Pension

“The Elopement’, John Collet

We are all aware of the strong legal disadvantages suffered by 18th-century married women. Before the passing of The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882, wives were treated as appendages to their husbands, with no independent rights. After marriage, husband and wife became one person under the law, all the property of the wife was surrendered to her husband and her separate legal identity ceased to exist. There were, however, certain problems for husbands in this situation too. If your wife ran away, then incurred debts by taking credit from shopkeepers and the like, you were still legally responsible for paying them. You and your wife, even if she said she had left your home for good, remained legally one person.

That’s why local newspapers often carried advertisements like these. Note that the word “elopement” at this time simply meant “running away”. It had not…

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Take Them to the Tower! Adventures in Regency Tourism

I am lucky enough to live just 30 minutes from the city of London by train and the station I go into is Tower Hill. To all non-Londoners that probably means very little, but to those in the know, t…

Source: Take Them to the Tower! Adventures in Regency Tourism

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Women in Music and Art in the Georgian Era

I was made to learn piano when I was young. I think we need to encourage children to learn an instrument or something artsy.

All Things Georgian

Needless to say in the 18^th century women were regarded as being of lower status than their male counterparts, this was especially noticeable in music. How many well-known female composers of the 18^th century have you heard of – not many, if any for a guess! Many women were however expected to study music and to be accomplished at playing an instrument or singing, merely as a form of entertainment for their family and friends. This went hand in hand with being the perfect hostess.

In this post we thought we would take a look at how art captured women playing a musical instrument, whether these women were actually able to play theses instruments we have no idea, maybe they were simply used as props in the paintings.  One of the most popular instruments for a woman to become accomplished at playing was the harpsichord and so we…

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1805 to 1810 Whitework Muslin Dress #Reg

Whitework was not only beautiful but very fashionable.

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Regency Domesticity: The Vacation Home

The Regency country house. Thank you, Angelyn!

Angelyn's Blog

From Ackermann’s Repository, October 1st, 1816, Volume II, the Tattler shares correspondence from a reader who is married to a Temple Bar shopkeeper.

The matron relates that business was profitable and in such a climate of prosperity her husband began to notice the fashion among other shopkeepers for keeping a second house in the country–a place away from the bustle and grime of London, for relaxation and recharging.

Appalled with the notion, she writes:

“It was in vain that I remonstrated on the inconveniences which it would inevitably produce, the probable neglect of business it might occasion, and the additional expense it certainly would produce.”

In spite of her arguments, the spirit of rivalry remained strong in the tradesman. He went so far as to hold up the example of Spangle, the laceman, who took a lease on a marvelous country home in Edmonton. Moreover, her husband had the effrontery to rely on the well-known principle that to appear to have a fortune is…

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Regency Domesticity: the Reformed Rake

I loved this post by Angelyn!! Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer is one of my favorite books of all time. But read the Cotillion as well where Kitty decided to reject the rake.

Angelyn's Blog

“It is a maxim, not uncommonly supported in female society, that ‘a reformed rake makes the best husband.’ ” —  Ackermann’s Repository, December 1, 1816, Vol. II No. XII

In a singular letter to the Tattler, the writer offers a disdainful explanation for such a phenomenon. One has either fallen violently in love with a rake and is blinded by passion to his many disastrous characteristics, or she’s such an innocent as to be wholly unacquainted with what a genuine rake is.

“ ‘I could manage him,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, but I could!’ ”

Far better to seek a man of great intellect and maturity, more concerned with the affairs of the world than the high life. One that only a bluestocking could love.

Balogh’s rake was “lewd, lascivious, mocking..”  And yet a bluestocking fell in love with him.

Of course, marriage to a prosing fool or some worthy devoted to his rural estate would be very dull. It is proposed, therefore, that a little dash…

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