“Go and Live Together Again and Try to be Happy”: Gender, Class, and Race in Marital Disputes in the British Police Courts, 1870–1940

Abstract Studies of mixed-race couples have largely centered on higher courts, yet most marital disputes involving poor couples went to the magistrates’ courts or petty sessions. This article uses a database of 107 cases (fifty-two separations for persistent cruelty and fifty-five cases of assault summonses between couples) to assess the role of gender, class, and race in working-class marriages. The study reveals a curious pattern. For the most part, gender (mixed with class) remained the most important factor in the adjudication of domestic violence cases. Husbands had legal and economic advantages that privileged reconciliation over separations; magistrates knew wives could not survive on the small sums most men could afford. However, newspaper coverage showed strong racial biases, especially after the race riots of 1919. Stories implied that people of color were “savages” or that the cultural differences between husbands and wives were too great to overcome. The one place the law and newspapers worked together was when violence interacted with vice crimes, especially with stereotypes such as Chinese opium sellers or men of African descent involved in sex work. When the law and newspapers worked together, their prejudices could influence the husbands’ treatment. Ironically, this emphasis had the effect of normalizing domestic violence.