Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. This is
Speaker 1: part two of our two part series on Mary Eleanor
Speaker 1: Bow's so if you haven't listened to part one you
Speaker 1: should probably start there. And just a brief content warning,
Speaker 1: this episode contains descriptions of spousal abuse. In early February
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty five, a scandal swept the coffeehouses of upper
Speaker 1: crust Georgian London. Mary Eleanor Bows, one of the richest
Speaker 1: women in Britain, had disappeared. She had always been a
Speaker 1: little bit eccentric, but in the years after marrying Irish
Speaker 1: soldier Andrew Robinson Stoney, things had gotten well stranger. Bows
Speaker 1: was known for being well spoken, elegant and poised, but
Speaker 1: recently she had been appearing at dinners in tattered clothes
Speaker 1: with cuts and bruises, sometimes barely saying a word, and
Speaker 1: then one day she was gone. The most plausible hypothesis
Speaker 1: was that she had eloped with some other man, but
Speaker 1: even that was far fetched. No one had even heard
Speaker 1: a rumor about another swain or suitor. The truth was
Speaker 1: something no one could have guessed Mary Eleanor Bow's wealthy
Speaker 1: heiress was hiding out using a fake name with no money,
Speaker 1: in a small apartment off an alleyway. At the time
Speaker 1: of her disappearance, Mary Eleanor Bows had been married to
Speaker 1: Andrew Robinson Stoney for eight years. As she discovered soon
Speaker 1: after their shotgun wedding, he had wooed her under false
Speaker 1: pretenses orchis an elaborate scheme including a fake psychic reading
Speaker 1: and a fake duel to marry her and arrest control
Speaker 1: of her vast coal fortune. Stony then made Mary Eleanor's
Speaker 1: life a living hell, starving her, isolating her, and beating her,
Speaker 1: which brings us to her disappearance in early seventeen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Fearing for her life, Mary Eleanor escaped with the help
Speaker 1: of a few of her maids. She fled to a
Speaker 1: little apartment off an alleyway in Holborn, with no possessions,
Speaker 1: no money, and using a false name. Soon the public
Speaker 1: would learn what had happened. As Mary Eleanor made initial
Speaker 1: steps to secure her independence, she set in motion three
Speaker 1: separate legal proceedings to try to get her freedom. The
Speaker 1: first was to protect her life, getting physical protection from Stony.
Speaker 1: The second motion was to protect her fortune, trying to
Speaker 1: ensure a prenup that she had managed to secretly smuggle
Speaker 1: away from under Stoney's nose would be honored. But it
Speaker 1: would be the third motion that would prove most difficult
Speaker 1: of all. Mary Eleanor Bowes was seeking a divorce from Stony,
Speaker 1: the man she accused of quote beating, scratching, biting, pinching, whipping, kicking, imprisoning, insulting, provoking, tormenting, mortifying, degrading, tyrannizing, cajoling, deceiving, lying, starving, forcing, compelling,
Speaker 1: and ringing of the heart. Under British law, that was
Speaker 1: technically grounds for divorce, but in practice divorces were expensive
Speaker 1: and extremely uncommon. Most of the plaintiffs in divorce cases
Speaker 1: were men. Women rarely filed for divorce and rarely won.
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor must have been daunted by the legal battles
Speaker 1: She knew she faced ahead, but achieving her freedom would
Speaker 1: turn out to be more lengthy, expensive, and emotionally taxing
Speaker 1: than she could have ever imagined, and it would put
Speaker 1: her fortune, her reputation, and her life at risk. I'm
Speaker 1: Danish Schwartz, and this is noble blood. Back at Gibbside Castle,
Speaker 1: Stony was already enraged at Mary Eleanor's disappearance, so we
Speaker 1: can only imagine his anger when he heard of the
Speaker 1: three motions she was filing. He set his sights on
Speaker 1: tracking his wife down, bribing servants to find and reveal
Speaker 1: her address, and even paying off shop owners to keep
Speaker 1: them from giving her food, hoping that if she's starved,
Speaker 1: she might be more likely to return to him and
Speaker 1: reconsider divorce. Stony also began in timid and paying off witnesses,
Speaker 1: threatening to fire maids and valets to prevent them from
Speaker 1: testifying against him. While he was stalking Mary Eleanor and
Speaker 1: bullying potential witnesses in private. He took great pains to
Speaker 1: appear in public as a long suffering, compassionate husband whose
Speaker 1: mercurial wife had suddenly up and left, deserting him and
Speaker 1: two young children. This made it all the harder for
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor, who was trying to find support for her
Speaker 1: legal cases while still in hiding. Unlike Stony, who had
Speaker 1: unfettered access to her family's estate, Mary Eleanor had no money.
Speaker 1: She reached out to her own family for financial, legal,
Speaker 1: or even emotional support. But they politely declined they saw
Speaker 1: her divorce as an embarrassment. Surprisingly, it was actually Stoney's
Speaker 1: family who was far more sympathetic to Mary Eleanor's plight.
Speaker 1: Stoney's sister, who was grieving the death of her first child,
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to Mary Eleanor saying, quote what a
Speaker 1: blessing it would be if my brother had been taken
Speaker 1: off at that age, while Stoney's father told Mary Eleanor
Speaker 1: that Stoney was quote the most wretched man I ever knew,
Speaker 1: But family loyalty prevented them from publicly supporting Mary Eleanor.
Speaker 1: They refused to appear in court. While the Georgian elite
Speaker 1: was more than willing to cast Mary Eleanor aside, as
Speaker 1: scholar Wendy Moore put it, quote, those who had the
Speaker 1: most to lose showed her the greatest loyalty. Mary Eleanor's
Speaker 1: maid supported her without wages and were willing to appear
Speaker 1: in court to speak about Stoney's abuse, putting their careers
Speaker 1: and even their lives at risk. When shopkeepers were forbidden
Speaker 1: from providing Mary Eleanor with food, gardeners sent her fruit
Speaker 1: and vegetables to eat. Mary Eleanor's lawyers worked on her
Speaker 1: case pro bono, assuming they would be paid if she won.
Speaker 1: Needing a panoply of witnesses to provide proof of Stoney's mistreatment,
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor spent her days writing and responding to letters
Speaker 1: trying to drum up support for her case. As her
Speaker 1: maid and close confidant, Mary Morgan, ran the letters to
Speaker 1: the post office. Being granted a divorce by a British
Speaker 1: court required a high burden of proof. A separation would
Speaker 1: only be granted if the offending party perpetuated life threatening,
Speaker 1: unprovoked acts of violence and cheated habitually. Mary Eleanor had
Speaker 1: a few witnesses testifying to Stoney's violence, but she needed
Speaker 1: to prove his adultery to shore her case. Dorothy Stevens,
Speaker 1: a wet nurse in the Beau's household, not only witnessed
Speaker 1: Stoney's abuse but suffered it herself. Stoney had raped her
Speaker 1: and gotten her pregnant before depositing her in a brothel
Speaker 1: and leaving her and her newborn child destitute. When Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor tried to get in contact with sex workers that
Speaker 1: lived with Dorothy, no one had seen any sign of her.
Speaker 1: Four weeks it wasn't until Dorothy's parents reached out to
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor in April seventeen eighty five that Mary Eleanor
Speaker 1: figured out what had happened. In order to prevent Dorothy
Speaker 1: from testifying against him, Stoney had kidnapped her and their
Speaker 1: three month old daughter and imprisoned them in a house
Speaker 1: in Kensington. Mary Eleanor and Dorothy's parents obtained a writ
Speaker 1: of habeas corpus to free her from Stoney's grasp. Dorothy
Speaker 1: appeared in court two weeks later, calling Stoney quote a
Speaker 1: man of very cruel, savage and abandoned disposition. Dorothy's testimony
Speaker 1: opened the floodgates. From then, many of Stoney's tenants and
Speaker 1: staff came forward with their own first hand experiences of
Speaker 1: his violence toward his wife. Perhaps sensing that the tide
Speaker 1: was turning against him, Andrew Stoney proposed an arbitration to
Speaker 1: divide up the estate between him and Mary Eleanor in
Speaker 1: exchange for Mary Eleanor suspending her divorce case. She agreed,
Speaker 1: but we should know by now that peace seeking was
Speaker 1: not in Stoney's nature. What would have normally been a
Speaker 1: conciliatory move masked Stoney's plan to crush Mary Eleanor into submission,
Speaker 1: Stoney used the guise of reconciliation to try and track
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor down. He told his staff, who he knew
Speaker 1: were providing Mary Eleanor with provisions and support, that they
Speaker 1: had reconciled and that there was no more need to
Speaker 1: hide her location. Finally, Stoney managed to find his wife
Speaker 1: by seizing a weekly delivery of garden produce from one
Speaker 1: of the groundskeepers, which contained her address. But Mary Eleanor
Speaker 1: was tipped off to Stoney's attempt to find her, and
Speaker 1: she managed to flee her apartment with no time to spare.
Speaker 1: She rejected Stoney's settlement and pressed forward with her trials.
Speaker 1: Back when Stoney had been trying to woo Mary Eleanor,
Speaker 1: he had staged a duel. Now in an effort to
Speaker 1: push back their divorce, he told the press that he
Speaker 1: had shot himself. He hadn't, but he thought the confusion
Speaker 1: might delay things. But on May sixth, seventeen eighty six,
Speaker 1: the divorce suit finally came up for hearing. According to
Speaker 1: the court conventions at the time, lawyers had been hearing
Speaker 1: depositions from witnesses on both sides for over a year,
Speaker 1: cross examining them in private. The court convened just so
Speaker 1: that the judge could make his decision. Astonishingly, he sided
Speaker 1: with Mary Eleanor. The judge mandated that the couple be
Speaker 1: divorced from bed bored and mutual cohabitation, and allotted Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor three hundred pounds a year in alimony on the
Speaker 1: grounds of both adultery and cruelty. Mary Eleanor must have
Speaker 1: been relieved to see her hard work pay off. She
Speaker 1: had only sex workers and servants on her side, no
Speaker 1: money to pay her lawyers, and struggled against a patriarchal
Speaker 1: society that demonized divorce. But after an unless win, Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor perhaps could exhale. But this was only the beginning
Speaker 1: of the legal battle ahead. Mary Eleanor's prenuptial agreement was
Speaker 1: still up for debate, which would either give her access
Speaker 1: to the fortune she had lost or condemn her to
Speaker 1: a life of poverty. Moreover, Andrew Stony, a man who
Speaker 1: had faked his own death two weeks earlier to avoid
Speaker 1: appearing in court, was not going to let go so easily.
Speaker 1: He immediately appealed the divorce decision, sending the couple back
Speaker 1: to court once again, and this time he was going
Speaker 1: to play dirty to win. Even with another divorce trial
Speaker 1: on the horizon and her prenup still up for debate,
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor was free, at least for a moment. At
Speaker 1: social events, she appeared happy and relf. She visited friends
Speaker 1: in the countryside and played quadrille at opulent parties awaiting
Speaker 1: the new legal term in the fall. But when the
Speaker 1: conversation veered toward her ex husband, Mary Eleanor's fear and
Speaker 1: anxiety emerged. She spoke to friends about strange men pretending
Speaker 1: to be law officers appearing at her doorstep, of deranged
Speaker 1: women trying to break into her house, of carriages following
Speaker 1: her down city streets, her male getting intercepted. Polite society
Speaker 1: dismissed her concerns, calling her paranoid. Behind her back, even
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor was questioning her own sanity. One night in
Speaker 1: October seventeen eighty six, one of her maids told her
Speaker 1: that a Hackney carriage had been following their coach. The
Speaker 1: maid could have sworn that she saw Stony leaning out
Speaker 1: of the window of the carriage, but it turned doubt
Speaker 1: that she was mistaken. He had been convalescing in bed
Speaker 1: after falling off his horse a few days prior. Even so,
Speaker 1: Mary barred any strangers from entering her house, and she
Speaker 1: vowed to stay inside until her divorce appeal was over.
Speaker 1: She hired a bodyguard to keep an eye out for
Speaker 1: any suspicious carriages or onlookers lingering outside her home. After
Speaker 1: a few days, on November tenth, seventeen eighty six, Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor felt sick of being cooped up and decided to
Speaker 1: visit a friend on Oxford Street, not far from the
Speaker 1: house on Bloomsbury Square where she was staying. Her bodyguard
Speaker 1: told her that she had nothing to worry about, but
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor had trouble relaxing. She had barely sat down
Speaker 1: for tea when she heard some commotion outside, and, fearing
Speaker 1: the worst, she locked herself in a garret room before
Speaker 1: her bodyguard appeared and told her it was safe to leave.
Speaker 1: As Mary Eleanor walked out the door onto Oxford Street,
Speaker 1: she was greeted with a crowd of armed men pointing
Speaker 1: their pistols right at her. Her bodyguard told her that
Speaker 1: she was being arrested, and he led her into her
Speaker 1: carriage at gunpoint. Mary Eleanor screamed for help, begging to
Speaker 1: be let go, but the gathering crowd simply watched as
Speaker 1: the carriage sped away. She wasn't being arrested. It was
Speaker 1: a kidnapping. On the carriage ride. Mary Elinor must have
Speaker 1: wondered whether this was Stoney's doing or whether she just
Speaker 1: happened to be the unlucky victim of an extortion or crime.
Speaker 1: But as the carriage arrived at the Red Lion Tavern,
Speaker 1: she had her answer. Stoney was waiting for her outside
Speaker 1: the front door. It turned out that all of Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor's paranoia was warranted. Stoney had been planning this kidnap
Speaker 1: for almost a month. Fearing that he would lose his
Speaker 1: divorce appeal, Stoney came up with yet another scheme. If
Speaker 1: he couldn't threaten Mary Eleanor into dropping the suit, he
Speaker 1: would force her to live with him, which would undermine
Speaker 1: her case, because the thinking went, why would he file
Speaker 1: a divorce against someone you were quote unquote willingly living with.
Speaker 1: He had bribed the man that became Mary Eleanor's bodyguard
Speaker 1: to insinuate himself into her life when she hired him.
Speaker 1: He reported to Stoney daily update about what she was
Speaker 1: up to. The bodyguard told Stony that Mary Eleanor planned
Speaker 1: to leave the house on November tenth, and so Stoney
Speaker 1: set the last steps of his plan into motion. He
Speaker 1: gathered together a group of cronies with guns to surround
Speaker 1: her and force her into a carriage. Immediately upon returning
Speaker 1: to Gibside Castle, Stoney and Mary Eleanor sat beside each
Speaker 1: other at the long dinner table in the dining room.
Speaker 1: He held a pistol to her breast, threatening to shoot
Speaker 1: her if she didn't drop the lawsuit. She refused. He
Speaker 1: told her to pray, and she did, saying I recommend
Speaker 1: my spirit to God and my friend to his protection.
Speaker 1: Fire and Stony did, but when he pulled the trigger,
Speaker 1: the gunpowder failed to ignite. Enraged, he punched her twice
Speaker 1: and asked her if that made her change her mind.
Speaker 1: She said, you may shoot me or beat me to
Speaker 1: a mummy. My person is in your power, but my
Speaker 1: mind is beyond your reach. Perhaps a little in awe
Speaker 1: of her determination, he said, by God, you are a
Speaker 1: wonderful woman. He had two of his cronies drag her
Speaker 1: up to their bedroom and he ordered her to sleep
Speaker 1: with him, knowing that if they had sex, he could
Speaker 1: claim that she wanted to remain his wife, which would
Speaker 1: render the divorce suit invalid. But Mary refused to consent,
Speaker 1: saying that she would accuse him of rape if he
Speaker 1: laid a hand on her. Stoney relented, letting her sleep alone.
Speaker 1: The next day, he fled the castle and went into hiding,
Speaker 1: taking Mary Eleanor with him. Mary Eleanor's supporters produced a
Speaker 1: writ of habeas corpus ordering Stony to bring Mary Eleanor back,
Speaker 1: but that wouldn't be enough without a nationwide police force
Speaker 1: to help her. Supporters hired a court tipstaff, which is
Speaker 1: basically an armed bailiff, to track her down. Stoney and
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor moved throughout the English countryside, where he told
Speaker 1: villagers that he was a doctor and she was his
Speaker 1: delusional patient, which meant that the villagers could ignore her
Speaker 1: cries for help. In the days after her kidnapping, the
Speaker 1: astonishing story spread throughout England as multiple newspapers reproduced the
Speaker 1: sordid details. A plowman who had heard about the case
Speaker 1: spotted a mysterious couple riding in Tunetia and ambushed them
Speaker 1: with that Mary Eleanor hopped on the generous plowman's horse
Speaker 1: and they rode away back to London. Mary Eleanor appeared
Speaker 1: in court a few days later, on November twenty third,
Speaker 1: to call for Stoney's arrest. She was clearly disheveled, covered
Speaker 1: with bruises and welts, and was in so much pain
Speaker 1: she could barely walk as she spoke of her kidnapping
Speaker 1: and mistreatment. The journalists and spectators in the crowd were
Speaker 1: shocked and moved. One wrote, quote, Lady Strathmore, from the
Speaker 1: extreme ill treatment she has perceived since forced from the metropolis,
Speaker 1: is become an object of the most extreme pity and
Speaker 1: compassion to every beholder. Stoney tried to make a play
Speaker 1: for the audience's sympathy using his favorite trick, faking his
Speaker 1: own death. He gave himself an emetic and made a
Speaker 1: show out of vomiting on the street, bribing a doctor
Speaker 1: to tell the court that he was too sick to
Speaker 1: come in, But the judge dismissed his claims, and the
Speaker 1: audience booed and heckled him as he limped into the courtroom.
Speaker 1: The judge ordered Stony to jail until the divorce case
Speaker 1: was heard setting his bail at twenty thousand pounds, which
Speaker 1: was likely the largest bail figure to date in a
Speaker 1: case of domestic abuse. According to Wendy Moore, Stoney's lawyers
Speaker 1: begged the judge to let him free, as a stint
Speaker 1: in jail might make his injuries and illness worse. The
Speaker 1: crowd laughed, tipstaffs carried Stoney out of court, and a
Speaker 1: huge mob of onlookers crowded him, hurling insults and jeers.
Speaker 1: Even on the way to jail. Stoney still had tricks
Speaker 1: up his sleeve. The incredible story of Mary Eleanor's kidnapping
Speaker 1: had made the trial a media circus, with onlookers and
Speaker 1: journalists filling the courtroom. Stoney planned to exploit the gossip
Speaker 1: hungry press to turn the tide against Mary Eleanor and
Speaker 1: perhaps rest control over her and her fortune once and
Speaker 1: for all. Stoney had already made modest attempts to undermine
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor's reputation in the press even before his arrest.
Speaker 1: Less than a month after Mary Eleanor won her first
Speaker 1: divorced tree, while he commissioned a pornographic cartoon of her,
Speaker 1: which appeared in the window of a print shop. The
Speaker 1: caption proclaimed that Mary Eleanor was going to give her
Speaker 1: stepson a taste of her dessert after dinner. A scene
Speaker 1: performed every day near Grosvenor Square to the annoyance of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, and she was pictured drunk and bearing her
Speaker 1: breasts as she beat an afraid looking boy. Other cartoons
Speaker 1: would follow. A particularly salacious one was her breastfeeding her
Speaker 1: cats as her son cried, I wish I was a cat.
Speaker 1: My mama would love me. Then, now, with Stony's reputation
Speaker 1: in shambles, he had to bring out the big guns.
Speaker 1: One off cartoons in random print shops weren't going to
Speaker 1: cut it. It helped that he had purchased an interest
Speaker 1: in The Times, which was more than willing to give
Speaker 1: air time to his side of the story. From his
Speaker 1: prison cell, Stoney promised the press that Mary Eleanor's sympathetic
Speaker 1: story was not what it seemed, and that he would
Speaker 1: reveal her equally scandalous misdeeds in court. On January twentieth,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty seven, when Mary Eleanor's second divorce hearing began,
Speaker 1: onlookers and reporters filed into the court room Stoney began
Speaker 1: the hearing with a bombshell allegation that Mary Eleanor had
Speaker 1: been brazenly and repeatedly cheating on him with any male
Speaker 1: acquaintance that would give her the time of day. While
Speaker 1: most of these made up encounters were dismissed by the court,
Speaker 1: one made a particular splash. Stony accused Mary Eleanor of
Speaker 1: an affair with George Walker, the executor of her prenup.
Speaker 1: Stony was probably trying to kill two birds with one
Speaker 1: stone here, both smearing Mary Eleanor's image and introducing evidence
Speaker 1: that could get the prenup annulled. The problem was there
Speaker 1: was no evidence for this alleged affair. Later, Walker told
Speaker 1: the press that Stoney had approached him with a bribe
Speaker 1: to lie on the stand, but Walker responded, I despised
Speaker 1: his offers, as I despised the man, even though his
Speaker 1: claims she committed adultery strained credulity. Stoney's lawyers brought out
Speaker 1: a document that would shock the court and the public alike.
Speaker 1: During their marriage, Stoney had forced Mary Eleanor to write
Speaker 1: a list of her sins to prove that she deserved
Speaker 1: his abuse. Stoney's lawyers brought this one hundred page document
Speaker 1: to court titled The Confessions of the Countess of Strathmore.
Speaker 1: In the document, Mary Eleanor revealed various flirtations, the affe
Speaker 1: she had had well married to her first husband, multiple abortions,
Speaker 1: and her pregnancy out of wedlock, and all of it
Speaker 1: was unmistakably in her handwriting. At first, it seemed like
Speaker 1: Stoney might have made a mistake in introducing the document
Speaker 1: to the court. Mary's lawyer dismissed it since it had
Speaker 1: clearly been written at Stoney's insistence. Even if the scandals
Speaker 1: it contained were true. The lawyer called it a pocket
Speaker 1: pistol meant to destroy her ladyship's fame and to harden
Speaker 1: and steel the hearts of everyone against her. The judge agreed.
Speaker 1: The courtroom clerk read only a few pages before the
Speaker 1: judge told him that this document was irrelevant to the
Speaker 1: case at hand and should be thrown out of court.
Speaker 1: They were right. Even if Stony had not forced Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor to create the document, and even if we agreed
Speaker 1: that having an abortion or cheating on your cold, indifferent
Speaker 1: first husband were unpardonable sins, Mary Eleanor's misdeeds would have
Speaker 1: no bearing on whether or not Stoney had abused her.
Speaker 1: The judge granted Mary a divorce yet again on May seventh,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty seven, but the court of public opinion began
Speaker 1: to see things differently the times which Stony had a
Speaker 1: staken wrote quote, the cause of her ladyship is not
Speaker 1: so immaculate as the world at large have been taught
Speaker 1: to believe. Even Stoney's father, who had called his son
Speaker 1: quote the most wretched man he knew, was now saying
Speaker 1: that quote, there has certainly been many faults on both sides,
Speaker 1: and that the divorce would set quote a dangerous precedent.
Speaker 1: That said, he didn't totally take the side of his
Speaker 1: son when when he died the following month, he left
Speaker 1: Stoney only two pounds as an inheritance. Even though Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor's quote confessions were thrown out of court, Stoney's more
Speaker 1: sympathetic framing in the press did have legal implications. His
Speaker 1: jail time was reduced from fourteen years to two, and,
Speaker 1: feeling optimistic about the turning tide of public opinion, he
Speaker 1: appealed the divorce decision yet again at the High Court
Speaker 1: of Delegates, which is the highest court of appeals the
Speaker 1: case could go. Mary Eleanor struck back with another lawsuit,
Speaker 1: charging Stoney with quote five counts of conspiracy that accused
Speaker 1: him of imprisoning Mary in order to compel her to
Speaker 1: drop her divorce suit, which brought the total lawsuits in
Speaker 1: process to three, the prenup lawsuit, a divorce and a
Speaker 1: criminal trial. The criminals suit was heard first, and the
Speaker 1: trial more closely resembled what we picture in a modern courtroom,
Speaker 1: with a jury, a judge, and two lawyers cross examining
Speaker 1: witnesses and giving impassioned arguments. Mary Eleanor's lawyer spoke in
Speaker 1: front of the crowd as he described her kidnapping and
Speaker 1: imprisonment in lurid detail. While kidnapping one's wife at gunpoint
Speaker 1: in broad daylight was considered uncouth, it wasn't technically illegal
Speaker 1: at the time. A husband had the legal right to
Speaker 1: confine and reprimand an unruly wife, but Mary Eleanor's lawyer
Speaker 1: pushed against the legal limits of the time. He described
Speaker 1: how Stony forced himself on Mary Eleanor as she fought
Speaker 1: him off, telling the likely skeptical all male jury that
Speaker 1: a husband is liable to be tried for a rape,
Speaker 1: even on his own wife, even though marital rape would
Speaker 1: not considered a crime for another two hundred years. The
Speaker 1: strategy worked. It took only a few minutes for the
Speaker 1: jury to unanimously declare Stony guilty, and the judge sentenced
Speaker 1: him to three years in prison. On June twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty seven. The next trial was for reinstating Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor's pre nup. This case, hinging on the validity of
Speaker 1: a decade's old document might seem tangential, but this was
Speaker 1: as important as the divorce trial itself, because even if
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor was granted her divorce, she would not be
Speaker 1: entitled to any financial remittance outside of the poulsterry monthly
Speaker 1: alimony payments. Meanwhile, Stoney was flush with money that, lest
Speaker 1: we forget, was originally Mary Eleanor's inheritance. While Mary Eleanor
Speaker 1: had no money to speak of, relying on her friend's charity,
Speaker 1: Stoney was i enjoying a rich man's life on her dime,
Speaker 1: even while ostensibly in prison. He lived in a lavish
Speaker 1: apartment in the Marshall, where he threw parties, eight decade
Speaker 1: in food and had affairs with mistresses, in addition to
Speaker 1: hiring various cronies to abduct friends and servants of Mary Eleanor's.
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor wrote quote, I believe that, instead of being tamed,
Speaker 1: Stoney will grow more and more desperate. I am therefore
Speaker 1: doubly cautious. On May nineteenth, seventeen eighty eight, the jury
Speaker 1: convened for the prenup trial in Westminster Hall. The trial
Speaker 1: began with another bombshell, giving spectators and journalists even more
Speaker 1: fodder for gossip. Mary Eleanor's council revealed that Stoney had
Speaker 1: courted her under false pretenses, faking the duel that duped
Speaker 1: her into an abusive marriage, with witnesses testifying to his
Speaker 1: faked battle scars. Stoney's lawyers didn't even try to prove
Speaker 1: that the duel was real. Instead, he essentially shrugged and
Speaker 1: said quote strategem was fair in love as well as
Speaker 1: in war. He tried his best to appeal to the
Speaker 1: patriarchal sensibilities of the all male jury, maintaining that Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor's prenup quote defrauded Stony of that absolute power which
Speaker 1: the law gives the husband over the personal estate of
Speaker 1: his wife. But After hearing the details of Stoney's scheme,
Speaker 1: it was hard to have any sympathy for him. The
Speaker 1: Lord Chief Justice said, quote, it was a marriage brought
Speaker 1: about by a fraud, a fraud of such a kind that,
Speaker 1: had it been practiced to obtain a hundred pounds from
Speaker 1: Lady Strathmore, mister Bows must have answered for it Criminally.
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor won the suit and her vast estate was
Speaker 1: finally hers once more. When the decision was announced, the
Speaker 1: crowd erupted into cheers. Only one lawsuit remained, the final
Speaker 1: divorce appeal, the last hindrance to Mary Eleanor's independence. The
Speaker 1: court convened on February thirteenth, seventeen eighty nine, and after
Speaker 1: so many years of retrying the same case and hearing
Speaker 1: constant updates in the press, spectators, jurors, journalists, and judges
Speaker 1: alike were more than familiar with the story. A parade
Speaker 1: of servants and sex workers testified to Stoney's abuse, while
Speaker 1: Stoney tried again to undermine Mary Eleanor's character. After reconvening
Speaker 1: on March second, the six judges took just thirty minutes
Speaker 1: to make their decision, and through Robinson, Stoney and Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor bows were officially divorced with no possibility of appeal.
Speaker 1: It would take hundreds of years for the legal freedoms
Speaker 1: Mary Eleanor achieved to be codified into law in the UK.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until eighteen seventy, a century later, that women
Speaker 1: were able to retain control over their estates after marriage
Speaker 1: without a prenup. In the United States, starting in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, women gained the right to have their own property,
Speaker 1: to inherit independently of their husbands, to work for a salary,
Speaker 1: right wills, and file lawsuits. Except for divorces. Women in
Speaker 1: the United States would not be able to file for
Speaker 1: divorce until nineteen thirty five, and even then they had
Speaker 1: to prove adultery, cruelty, or desertion, nearly the same standards
Speaker 1: as in Mary Eleanor's time. In England, women with Mary
Speaker 1: Eleanor's means and tenacity could file for divorce, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen twenty three that the burden of proof
Speaker 1: was lowered. The relentless physical abuse Mary Eleanor suffered would
Speaker 1: not be illegal in the United States until nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: and marital rape, which Mary Eleanor's lawyer, tentatively raised in
Speaker 1: court in seventeen eighty seven, would not be a crime
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety one in the UK and nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three in the US. After her divorce trial, Mary Eleanor
Speaker 1: shied away from the public eye and resigned herself to
Speaker 1: a quiet life. She prioritized rebuilding her relationships with her children,
Speaker 1: who she had been barred from seeing throughout her marriage.
Speaker 1: She also lavished attention on her he many pets. She
Speaker 1: had many cats and dogs, a donkey, a parrot, and
Speaker 1: a robin named Bob. She insisted that each of her
Speaker 1: dogs have a bed of its own and a hot
Speaker 1: meal every day. Although Mary Eleanor set her literary and
Speaker 1: botanical ambitions aside, she wrote a poem to Stony in prison, quote,
Speaker 1: he was the very enemy of mankind, deceitful to his friends,
Speaker 1: ungrateful to his benefactors, cringing to his superiors, and tyrannical
Speaker 1: to his dependence. She died at age forty six. In
Speaker 1: her will, she made two requests for her burial. The
Speaker 1: first was that she wanted to be buried in her
Speaker 1: wedding dress from her first marriage to the Earl of
Speaker 1: Strathmore back when she was eighteen. Even though it seems
Speaker 1: a little weird for someone who had such agonizing, miserable marriages,
Speaker 1: it speaks to a romantic sensibility that survived even an
Speaker 1: unspeakable violence. Her second request was for a statue of
Speaker 1: the blindfolded Figure of Justice to be placed on her tomb.
Speaker 1: That request was unfortunately ignored, but even without the statue,
Speaker 1: her life was a testament to justice. Mary Eleanor Bows
Speaker 1: fought for it in the face of a cruel system
Speaker 1: and a pathologically abusive husband, and despite the odds, she won.
Speaker 1: That's the story of Mary Eleanor Bow's but keep listening
Speaker 1: after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: more about one of her descendants. It was a divorce
Speaker 1: trial that catapulted Mary Eleanor Bows into the spotlight, and
Speaker 1: almost two hundred years later, the lives of one of
Speaker 1: her direct descendants would also be changed forever because of
Speaker 1: a divorce, or rather because of a divorcee. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, King Edward the Eighth abdicated the throne in
Speaker 1: order to marry the woman he loved, an American named
Speaker 1: Wallace Simpson, who was twice divorced with her previous husband
Speaker 1: still alive. Seeing as the King of England was also
Speaker 1: the head of the Church of England, that simply could
Speaker 1: not be abided, and so Edward the eighth stepped aside
Speaker 1: and his younger brother rose to the throne as George
Speaker 1: the sixth. And at George's side was his wife, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Bow's Lion, a woman who never would have imagined that
Speaker 1: she might become queen now. The late Queen Elizabeth is
Speaker 1: more frequently known as the Queen Mother because she was
Speaker 1: the dowager Queen for decades and mother to the Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth who reigned for much of the twentieth century. But
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bow's Lion Queen Mother was also the great great
Speaker 1: great granddaughter of Mary Eleanor Bows. Noble Blood is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manke.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwort,
Speaker 1: with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick,
Speaker 1: Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is
Speaker 1: edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rema Ill Kahali,
Speaker 1: with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.