GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works Faculty Scholarship 2002 Faithless Wives and Lazy Husbands: Gender Norms in Nineteenth Century Divorce Law Naomi R. Cahn George Washington University Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Naomi Cahn, Faithless Wives and Lazy Husbands: Gender Norms in Nineteenth Century Divorce Law, 2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 651 (2002). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Faithless Wives and Lazy Husbands: Gender Norms in Nineteenth Century Divorce Law Naomi Cahn* INTRODUCTION For six days in November of 1860, Judge Lott of the Brooklyn Supreme Court heard the divorce case brought by Alfred Beardsley against Mary Elizabeth Beardsley.1 Mr. Beardsley claimed that his wife had committed bigamy2 by marrying another man while she was still married to him. Mr. Beardsley produced the testimony of Father Malone, the Catholic priest who had performed this presumptive second marriage, as well as Thomas Mahon, the alleged second husband. The putative second husband told of how he had courted and wed Mrs. Beardsley, believing her, at the time, to be Miss Emma Evaline Seymore; Miss Seymore had represented not only that she was the daughter of a * Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School. Thanks to Richard Chused, Reva Siegel, Emily Van Tassel, Norma Basch, Dirk Hartog, Philip Hamburger, Susan Sterett, Lisa Lerman, Brian Bix, Ariela Dubler, Carolyn Lawes, Renee Lettow Lerner, and Jennifer Wriggins for comments, and to Stephanie Vo and Trisha Smith for research assistance.