What if, like Stephen Blackpool in Dicken’s ‘Hard Times’, the marriage has distressingly failed, because as Stephen said, his wife, ‘went bad.’ In ‘Jane Eyre’, Bertha Mason was insane, so Mr. Rochester secluded her to rooms out of sight rather than put her in the asylum. He would have married Jane bigamously if he hadn’t been found out. Stephen was poor. He had no room in his small house to hide his wife away and could not marry Rachel as he knew this was against the law. So he asked Mr Bounderby’s advice on how to get rid of his wife. Divorce was the answer but that would cost a great deal of money, as well getting an Act of Parliament if he wanted to marry again.
In 1801, in and very much around Guisborough, the gossips were rife at many tea table discussions. Mrs Hale wrote to her daughter-in-law in Quebec about this particular scandal;
“Mrs Markham of Stokesley has been detected in a naughty intercourse with Mr Fawcett her neighbour….(Mr Markham) says this affair is to be brought before the House of Lords to obtain a divorce. I commiserate the situation of poor Markham with his nine children. He is deservedly loved by us all. His vain, foolish wife I never liked.” (Lewin Letters)
Rev George Markham
Rev George Markham was the Dean of York and Rector of Stokesley. He had been close friends with John Fawcett since childhood. They had both attended school and Oxford University at the same time. George considered John as his closest friend, akin to a brother, so he was a frequent visitor to his home.
However, servants notice things, whilst they themselves are usually scarcely noticed. Catering for all the needs of the household, servants observe spy-like. They gossip below stairs, betray secrets and pass the gossip onto other households.
Mrs Elizabeth Boys was the Markham household’s housekeeper and lady’s maid to Mrs. Markham. She suspected her mistress of infidelity, having thought Mr Fawcett had entered the room but she had no proof. She arranged some stones outside Mrs Markham’s bedroom window but they had not been moved, so that plan didn’t work.
Mrs Markham’s affair
Below stairs gossip would have abounded, so the manservant when serving the food at the dinner table, at which Mr Fawcett was frequently present, noticed what he considered an improper connection between Mr Fawcett and Mrs Markham. One day, Mrs Markham gave him a letter to be delivered to Mr Fawcett.
This letter, he thought, was suspicious and could contain details of an assignation. So, that night he observed the ground floor bedroom window where Mrs Markham slept, had been drawn up. The curtains were drawn to hide this fact. The manservant decided to hide and wait.
Sure enough, Mr Fawcett appeared, looked about him, went up to the window, drew the curtain and climbed into Mrs Fawcett’s bedroom, before drawing the curtain once more. The servant waited awhile, silently crept up to the bedroom, pulled the curtain far enough aside for him to see inside the bedroom, and he saw the lovers, as Mrs Hale said having ‘naughty intercourse.’
The servant-spy informed the unsuspecting Rev Markham and Mrs Markham was packed off back to her father and a divorce went ahead. Mrs Markham’s father died in 1802, so she became supported by her cousin Lady Bath, a lady without heirs.
A bill of divorce
There was a bill of divorce with leave to marry again given but as adultery was a criminal act, John Fawcett was sued for damages of £20,000. There was a Court Case with a jury and newspaper reports throughout the country that gave all the details of this adulterous affair. Mrs Markham, now Elizabeth Evelyn Sutton (her maiden name) was hailed as a great beauty with many accomplishments.
There were children to consider, now of course with Rev Markham. The affair existed five years before its discovery, so that would bring the paternity of some of the children into question.
The cost of divorce
John Fawcett pleaded that his excessive passion had been overcome by Elizabeth’s beauty (something the men in the jury would relate to, unlike Mrs Hale and her tea-drinking friends), and as he had already sold his estates, if he had to pay £20,000 in damages, he would either have to go into exile abroad or spend the rest of his life in debtor’s prison as he could not pay. The jury reduced the damages to £7,000 to Rev Markham for the loss of his property, his wife. (Almost one million pounds today.)
John and Elizabeth Evelyn married. They had more children. Lady Bath died and left all her assets to them on the condition they changed their surnames to her surname, Pulteney, which they did.
Stephen Blackpool could never have afforded an expensive divorce. Divorce was too expensive for most people until the 1920’s extension of legal aid. In the 1960’s divorce cases were taken over by county courts. In 2021 there were 113,505 divorces in England and Wales.
But less people are getting married as the number of cohabiting couples increase, 18.4% in 2022. Of those who do marry, only 18.2% are church weddings, leaving 82.8% being civil ceremonies. We return to places like Gretna Green where wedding packages and even a wedding planner are advertised. People have been marrying in Gretna Hall since 1710 and in the Blacksmith’s Shop since 1754. Civil ceremonies like this are now the expensive norm. Stephen Blackpool would have found it too expensive to get married at all today!
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