Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised. It's the
Speaker 1: middle of June eighteen thirty six and the courtroom in
Speaker 1: London is packed. The man being publicly tried for infidelity
Speaker 1: is as high ranking as you can be in England
Speaker 1: short of being the King. He is the Prime Minister,
Speaker 1: Lord Melbourne. But the woman he may have cheated on
Speaker 1: his wife with is as much a draw as he is.
Speaker 1: She is one of the most well known women in London.
Speaker 1: A beauty, but an unusual one, dark eyed and flirtatious,
Speaker 1: and entirely too smart by nineteenth century standards. A writer
Speaker 1: married her self to an abusive husband who, as rumor
Speaker 1: had it, had once pushed her so hard he had
Speaker 1: caused a miscarriage. The woman's name is Caroline Norton, rumored vixen,
Speaker 1: close friend, and maybe more of the Prime Minister. But
Speaker 1: as the spectators who came to see her quickly realize,
Speaker 1: Caroline Norton isn't there in the courtroom. She's elsewhere, holed
Speaker 1: up with her mother, away from her children, waiting for
Speaker 1: a messenger's horse to gallop toward her with news of
Speaker 1: her fate. It was only right in a way that
Speaker 1: she wasn't in the courtroom on that drizzling day in June,
Speaker 1: because in the year eighteen thirty six in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: a married woman like Caroline had no legal existence. Unmarried
Speaker 1: women looked down upon as they were existed as legal
Speaker 1: entities in the court system. Unmarried women had custody rights
Speaker 1: over their children born out of wedlock. But when Caroline
Speaker 1: Norton was accused of infidelity, as far as the legal
Speaker 1: system was concerned, she didn't exist. She could stand to
Speaker 1: lose everything, her children, her access to her earnings as
Speaker 1: a writer, her social standing. Yet her legal identity was
Speaker 1: fully subsumed into her husband, and it was her truly
Speaker 1: bad luck to be married to a man named George Norton.
Speaker 1: Mister Norton had once asked his more popular, vivacious wife
Speaker 1: to use her ties with the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne
Speaker 1: to advance his own career. Now mister Norton was suing
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister for criminal conversation with his wife. Criminal
Speaker 1: conversation or krim con was a euphemism that meant adultery.
Speaker 1: Though it took two titango. Only men could be hauled
Speaker 1: to court for the crime. Because Caroline Norton was married,
Speaker 1: she couldn't be sued. She was not a legal entity.
Speaker 1: What she was was the legal property of her husband
Speaker 1: that may have been devalued by the Prime Minister. The
Speaker 1: story of Caroline Norton is the tale of a bold
Speaker 1: woman of the nineteenth century, a writer of sparkling wit,
Speaker 1: trapped by the law and by the culture of her time.
Speaker 1: Never a feminist by her own description, and yet a
Speaker 1: staunch campaigner for women's rights. It's the story of a
Speaker 1: sad woman cut off from the children she loved by
Speaker 1: an abusive man, and it's the tale of the long
Speaker 1: legal battles that finally earned basic rights for women in
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. Caroline Norton was the popular author of
Speaker 1: five novels and twelve poetry collections. She was the close
Speaker 1: correspondent of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. She was daughter
Speaker 1: in a line of writers, a wife unable to obtain
Speaker 1: a divorce from an abusive husband, a loving mother who
Speaker 1: adored her three boys, and a grieving woman who was
Speaker 1: kept away from them. She was the subject of a
Speaker 1: ton of press and a ton of rumors. Mary Shelley
Speaker 1: called her spellbinding. The Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne called her
Speaker 1: husband a stupid brute for whom she was too headstrong.
Speaker 1: Her own grandfather said he wouldn't want to meet her
Speaker 1: in a dark wood. And Caroline Norton pen in hand
Speaker 1: was behind the fight that would earn married women legal
Speaker 1: recognition for the first time in British history. I'm Danish
Speaker 1: schwartz and this is noble blood. Caroline Norton was born
Speaker 1: Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan on March twenty second, eighteen eight
Speaker 1: in London. The Sheridan family name was already famous for
Speaker 1: both art and scandal. Her grandfather, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was
Speaker 1: the author of the famous play The School for Scandal,
Speaker 1: an aptly titled satire of the world of social status
Speaker 1: and gossip, which might sound familiar if you listen to
Speaker 1: our episodes on the Duchess of Devonshire, who ran the
Speaker 1: social circle that that play was mocking. While Caroline's mother
Speaker 1: was pregnant with her her father was convicted of criminal
Speaker 1: conversation that had taken place before he was married, but
Speaker 1: before his mistress was married. This was the buzzed about
Speaker 1: atmosphere in which dark eyed Caroline was born. Her earliest
Speaker 1: life was marked by tragedy. When she was only five
Speaker 1: and a half, her father left to tend to his
Speaker 1: health and died. After that, Caroline was sent to Scotland,
Speaker 1: where she didn't see her mother for four years. But
Speaker 1: everything picked up for Caroline as she entered young adulthood.
Speaker 1: She reunited with her mother and siblings and they all
Speaker 1: moved to Hampton Court Palace in London. Like many young
Speaker 1: writers to be, Caroline and her sisters wrote little books,
Speaker 1: except unlike many young writers to be, a publisher printed
Speaker 1: fifty copies of Caroline's book when she was about eleven
Speaker 1: years old. She grew up as the middle of three
Speaker 1: sisters who were known as exuberant beauties, all like men,
Speaker 1: eyes twinkling with the knowledge of what they were doing
Speaker 1: to these hapless gentlemen around them. They called to mind
Speaker 1: the three Bronte sisters who were born about ten years later.
Speaker 1: The Sheridan girls were just fun, more like the three
Speaker 1: social Skuylar sisters as portrayed in the musical Hamilton. And
Speaker 1: if we're going with the Schuylar comparison, Caroline was definitely
Speaker 1: the Angelica. She was the wittiest, the most gossiped about,
Speaker 1: the slyest, the most outrageous and playful, and egotistical and irreverent.
Speaker 1: She was also the most unusual looking, it was generally agreed,
Speaker 1: but that only made her more captivating. She was known
Speaker 1: to lower her big eyelids and look up from under
Speaker 1: them in descriptions that remind me of little of Princess Diana.
Speaker 1: Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, discribed Caroline far better and
Speaker 1: more sensuously than I could. Quote. I never saw a
Speaker 1: woman I thought so fascinating. Had I been a man,
Speaker 1: I should certainly have fallen in love with her. I
Speaker 1: would have been spellbound, And had she taken the trouble,
Speaker 1: she might have wound me round her finger. There is
Speaker 1: something in the pretty way in which her witticisms glide,
Speaker 1: as it were, from her lips end quote. If you're
Speaker 1: hearing a lot of famous women in the comparisons I'm
Speaker 1: making here, there's a reason bright literary Caroline was born
Speaker 1: into an era when many authors were women. Jane Austen,
Speaker 1: George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Caroline's own mother. Yet any married
Speaker 1: woman of the era, no matter how much her own
Speaker 1: writing earned, would find that her copyright and her earnings
Speaker 1: belonged to her husband, and artists didn't make much of
Speaker 1: a living then or now, so the Sheridans were not rich.
Speaker 1: Caroline would have little dowry to offer a husband. That
Speaker 1: didn't matter to her first love, Ralph Levison Smith, with
Speaker 1: whom she fell in love when she was around seventeen,
Speaker 1: But by her nineteenth birthday, Ralph had fallen ill and died.
Speaker 1: Caroline would look back on this first lost hope for
Speaker 1: decades to come, always wondering how differently her life might
Speaker 1: have been if she had been able to marry the
Speaker 1: boy she had truly loved. Instead, she married George Norton,
Speaker 1: younger son in line for the title of Lord Grantly.
Speaker 1: He had been totally heartstruck over Caroline from the moment
Speaker 1: he first laid eyes on her. She was nineteen when
Speaker 1: she married him, and he was twenty seven. He may
Speaker 1: have been obsessed with his vivacious young bride, but even
Speaker 1: so he was late to his own wedding. The Norton
Speaker 1: couple lived together in a home called Story's Gate, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a fairy tale, but their life wound up
Speaker 1: more like a nightmare. Things were all right at first.
Speaker 1: Caroline hosted salons of high society writers and thinkers, still
Speaker 1: able to use her sparkling wit and sly personality. George
Speaker 1: Norton was a member of Parliament, and he could walk
Speaker 1: from their front door to the House of Commons in
Speaker 1: a matter of minutes. And when Caroline moved aside her
Speaker 1: white muslin curtains and peered out her window, she could
Speaker 1: almost see Downing Street, home of the Prime Minister. Within
Speaker 1: the span of four years, Caroline, one of three beautiful sisters,
Speaker 1: gave birth to three sons, Fletcher, Brynn, and little Willie.
Speaker 1: Her pregnancies were called being quote on the sofa. Another
Speaker 1: little euphemism, just like adultery, was criminal conversation. Her three
Speaker 1: boys were the light of her life. She loved them dearly, deeply,
Speaker 1: and immediately. She published books and edited magazines while caring
Speaker 1: for the babies, sounding exactly like a working writer to day.
Speaker 1: She even wrote her own books while nursing. But it
Speaker 1: didn't take long for George Norton's infatuation with his young,
Speaker 1: vivacious bride to be Caroline Sheridan, to turn into violent
Speaker 1: abuse toward his wife, Caroline Norton. He kicked her, shoved her,
Speaker 1: burned her hand with a tea kettle. When she miscarried
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty five, rumor had it he had pushed her.
Speaker 1: She stayed away from her husband for a little while
Speaker 1: after that, but inevitably she had to come back. She
Speaker 1: was a writer and her byeline was Missus Norton. Her
Speaker 1: earnings belonged to her husband. She was supporting him in
Speaker 1: every possible way, including when he lost his seat in Parliament.
Speaker 1: That was when George Norton first asked his wife Caroline
Speaker 1: for help. He wanted her to use the popularity and
Speaker 1: charm that had first charmed him and now enraged him
Speaker 1: to intercede with the government's Home Secretary, a certain William Lamb,
Speaker 1: also known as Lord Melbourne, future Prime Minister. Caroline adored
Speaker 1: Lord Melbourne. He was a handsome, successful man, the opposite
Speaker 1: of her husband, and he was a true bright spot
Speaker 1: in her life, and Lord Melbourne seemed to adore the
Speaker 1: beguiling care Norton right back. They exchanged letters that were
Speaker 1: always friendly, often teasing, usually flirtatious, occasionally romantic. She joked
Speaker 1: about making a future daughter of hers his second wife.
Speaker 1: His first wife, who had died a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: had been Caroline Lamb, lover of Lord Byron, whose story
Speaker 1: we have covered on this podcast. Basically everyone in this
Speaker 1: social circle was having affairs. Lord Melbourne called on Caroline
Speaker 1: Norton at home once she even gasp took his hand
Speaker 1: in parliament. They both were infatuated. At the least, they
Speaker 1: found an entrancing, exciting, sweet joy with each other. Caroline
Speaker 1: at least may have been in some form of love.
Speaker 1: Lord Melbourne had already paid off a former criminal conversion charge,
Speaker 1: so he was certainly willing to engage in extramarital dalliances.
Speaker 1: He and Caroline may have heavy petted, they may have
Speaker 1: had sex, but there's not really concrete evidence to suggest
Speaker 1: they did. The letters between them read to me at
Speaker 1: least like heterosexual friends with a romantic or flirtatious spark
Speaker 1: between them, people who recognize that in different circumstances they
Speaker 1: almost certainly would have been together. But they definitely are
Speaker 1: flirtatious letters. We just don't know for a fact what
Speaker 1: went on with the two of them behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: Of course, flirtatious ambiguity rarely matters to an abusive husband.
Speaker 1: In April eighteen forty six, George and Caroline had another
Speaker 1: of their many fights. By this time, Lord Melbourne was
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Caroline didn't know how
Speaker 1: bad the fight with her husband had been until after
Speaker 1: she left to visit her sister, and upon returning, found
Speaker 1: that her husband had taken her children away from her.
Speaker 1: Caroline Norton was a writer, a flirt, a hostess, but
Speaker 1: more than anything. If you had asked her, she would
Speaker 1: have said she was a mother. She adored her three
Speaker 1: boys with an overwhelming love. I have done nothing but cry,
Speaker 1: she wrote to Lord Melbourne. I could hear their little
Speaker 1: feet running merrily over my head while I sat sobbing below.
Speaker 1: Only the ceiling between us, and I am not able
Speaker 1: to get at them. The problem was, at the time,
Speaker 1: fathers had full custody rights to their children, the opposite
Speaker 1: of most custody disputes today, which generally favor the mother. Ironically,
Speaker 1: if Caroline had had illegitimate children with George Norton, the
Speaker 1: children would have been herbs. But she had the bad
Speaker 1: luck of being married, and divorce was only possible by
Speaker 1: an Act of Parliament, which was granted only in the
Speaker 1: rarest of cases. Between April and June, Caroline wrote to Melbourne,
Speaker 1: half despairing over her children and half fuming at her husband.
Speaker 1: Her outrage reads very modern. Quote Here is a man
Speaker 1: who was mad to marry me at eighteen, who turns
Speaker 1: me out of his house nine years afterwards and inflicts
Speaker 1: vengeance as bitterly as he can end quote. And the
Speaker 1: sharp knife of her writer's pen is evident when she writes,
Speaker 1: thank god, everyone in the house hates him, so they'll
Speaker 1: tell me what's done. But it wasn't entirely true that
Speaker 1: everyone hated her husband. So when spiteful George Norton sued
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne for criminal conversation with his wife,
Speaker 1: it wasn't at all certain that he would lose. The
Speaker 1: trial took place on June twenty second, eighteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: It was a classic drizzly day in London, but the
Speaker 1: rumors came like a flood. Political cartoonist punned on Melbourne's
Speaker 1: family name Lamb to publish lampoons in the papers. Wiggs,
Speaker 1: in Melbourne's party, accused the Tories of bringing the suit
Speaker 1: for political purposes. Pamphlet promised an extraordinary trial, damages set
Speaker 1: at ten thousand pounds three exclamation points. One more literary cameo.
Speaker 1: A twenty four year old Charles Dickens reported from the courtroom.
Speaker 1: The place was completely packed, the hot breath and sweat
Speaker 1: of the men in attendance mingled with the excitement in
Speaker 1: the air. They were going to hear salacious stories of
Speaker 1: the forbidden love that had sprung up between the famous
Speaker 1: literary beauty Caroline Norton and the Prime Minister himself. The
Speaker 1: crowd sat at the edge of their seats, their pulses racing,
Speaker 1: waiting for the scandalous details. But what the crowd heard
Speaker 1: was lackluster. The servants and former servants of the Norton
Speaker 1: household were the main witnesses, and all they could offer
Speaker 1: by way of evidence felt like innuendo at best. Melbourne
Speaker 1: and Caroline closed the door when they were together. Sometimes
Speaker 1: her hair looked a little out of place. Sometimes she
Speaker 1: washed her hands. After his visits. Melbourne once wrote her
Speaker 1: a note that said how are you without first addressing
Speaker 1: her by name. The men of the jury found it
Speaker 1: as pathetically unconvincing as you might listener. They took about
Speaker 1: a minute to decide against George Norton. The prosecution had
Speaker 1: proven only conversation of the regular, non criminal sort. The
Speaker 1: observers went away, disappointed, out into the moonlight. Charles Dickens
Speaker 1: would later caricature the trial in his novel The Pickwick Papers.
Speaker 1: So Lord Melbourne had won the trial against George Norton,
Speaker 1: he had not legally committed adultery with Caroline Norton. That
Speaker 1: meant Caroline had won two, albeit vicariously. She was happy
Speaker 1: to emerge victorious, but the worst blow, after the loss
Speaker 1: of her children, was still to come, and it would
Speaker 1: come from Melbourne himself. He had always counseled her to
Speaker 1: stay with her husband, to bear everything, as he put it,
Speaker 1: but around the trial he went cold on her. She
Speaker 1: had loved him, however familial, romantic, consummated or unconsummated. We
Speaker 1: might judge that loved time to be. But now that
Speaker 1: their relationship had public consequences, Melbourne seemed to be backing off.
Speaker 1: In a message that feels exactly like a woman to
Speaker 1: day texting a man who used to care and just
Speaker 1: doesn't any more, Caroline wrote, quote, my heart sinks and
Speaker 1: chills at seeing how little I am to you. I
Speaker 1: am to be a childless mother for my supposed power
Speaker 1: to charm strangers, and yet the man whom I have
Speaker 1: been charming ever since I was twenty and two, well,
Speaker 1: I beg pardon. I don't want to torment you. All
Speaker 1: I say is worse women have been stood by. So
Speaker 1: Caroline had, through Melbourne, won a sensational trial. But if
Speaker 1: she had some sense that it wasn't much of a victory,
Speaker 1: she was absolutely right. Caroline Norton was alone after the trial.
Speaker 1: Caroline was publicly cleared of wrongdoing, but privately she was
Speaker 1: still the legal extension of her abusive husband, and George
Speaker 1: Norton wasn't the type to keep his head held high.
Speaker 1: He had been publicly humiliated by his wife. After trying
Speaker 1: to publicly humiliate his wife after the trial, he tried
Speaker 1: to change their son, Willie's name to Charles, because God
Speaker 1: forbid their son share a first name with Lord Melbourne.
Speaker 1: But any and all pettiness would have been better than
Speaker 1: the cruelty George ultimately chose. He kept Caroline's children away
Speaker 1: from her. Her legal innocence didn't matter. She had been
Speaker 1: an object in the krim con trial anyway, not the defendant.
Speaker 1: She was collateral damage. That meant she had never really
Speaker 1: been cleared, not in George Norton's heart anyway. Caroline could
Speaker 1: not sue for custody, As biographer Antonia Fraser explicitly states,
Speaker 1: Caroline had no legal existence outside marriage. There was nothing
Speaker 1: she could do. But Caroline Norton was a writer. No
Speaker 1: matter what, she could always write. So with strength and
Speaker 1: fortitude I can only imagine, Caroline used her husband's own
Speaker 1: law books to study child custody. She wrote pamphlets lobbying
Speaker 1: to change the laws so that the mother could appeal
Speaker 1: for custody of her children up to age seven, and finally,
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty nine, three years after the famous krim
Speaker 1: Con trial, the law was passed. The Infant Custody Bill
Speaker 1: represented the first time in English history that married woman
Speaker 1: existed as her own legal entity, But it was a
Speaker 1: hollow victory. The law applied to England, Ireland and Wales,
Speaker 1: but not to Scotland, and Caroline's almost cartoonishly villainous husband
Speaker 1: had the children in Scotland. The saddest part of the
Speaker 1: story comes next. Caroline had fought for the rights of
Speaker 1: women and their children. She had loved her children with
Speaker 1: her whole heart. She had won a victory for other women,
Speaker 1: but not for herself. And in eighteen forty two, when
Speaker 1: her youngest, Willie was nine, he fell off his pony,
Speaker 1: a scrape that Caroline knew in her heart she would
Speaker 1: have cared for properly, but under her husband's carelessness, the
Speaker 1: severity of the injury progressed. Even George Norton had to
Speaker 1: finally acknowledge that their sweet boy was very, very sick.
Speaker 1: The moment that Caroline was called, she raced to her
Speaker 1: baby as fast as she could. I'm coming, she thought.
Speaker 1: She tried to convey it to him across the miles,
Speaker 1: I'm coming, But her beloved youngest son was lying in
Speaker 1: bed when he died, calling for his mother, who was
Speaker 1: still on her way. After Willie's death, George Norton relented
Speaker 1: a little. Caroline did get to see her sons, Fletcher
Speaker 1: and Bryn more often. She kept writing. She maintained a
Speaker 1: friendship with Lord Melbourne until his death in eighteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: She spent time with Brinn's children, her grandchildren. She cared
Speaker 1: for Fletcher until his death at age thirty in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. Caroline lobbied for racial justice for the disabled
Speaker 1: and for the poor. In eighteen seventy three, the law
Speaker 1: was chained so mothers could appeal for custody of children
Speaker 1: up to the age of sixteen, and in eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: at last, she was finally freed from her worst prison
Speaker 1: marriage to George Norton. He died at age seventy four.
Speaker 1: By this point, Caroline was also in very ill health,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't going to let that stop her. At
Speaker 1: long last, at the age of sixty nine, she became
Speaker 1: the thing she had never really been before, a bride
Speaker 1: in love. In eighteen seventy seven, the once famous dark
Speaker 1: eyed widow Caroline Norton married Sir William Sterling Maxwell. She
Speaker 1: died three months later. Nearly half a century after that,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty five, the Guardianship of Infants Act gave
Speaker 1: mothers full equality in custody proceeds. That's the sad story
Speaker 1: of Caroline Norton and her fight for legal recognition of
Speaker 1: married women. But stick around after a brief sponsor break
Speaker 1: to hear how Caroline made her way into Parliament. After all,
Speaker 1: when Caroline was involved with the legal system, she had
Speaker 1: no legal rights as a married woman, She lost access
Speaker 1: to her children and the laws would not help her.
Speaker 1: She had no legal power. It was Caroline's confidante, Lord Melbourne,
Speaker 1: who was Prime Minister, and Caroline's husband, George Norton, who
Speaker 1: had been a member of Parliament, but Caroline Norton's image
Speaker 1: was to hang above where they'd all stepped in the
Speaker 1: House of Lords. In eighteen forty one, artist Daniel maclease
Speaker 1: was commited to portray the spirit of justice in a
Speaker 1: fresco for Parliament. When the time came to choose who
Speaker 1: would portray the figure at the center whose image would
Speaker 1: be used as the model of justice, macleae didn't hesitate.
Speaker 1: He chose Caroline Norton. He painted her in white robes,
Speaker 1: holding the scales of justice, looking up toward the heavens,
Speaker 1: surrounded by a woman holding her child to her breast,
Speaker 1: an emancipated former slave, and a subdued man with a
Speaker 1: knife taken away. Caroline is the model of perfect serenity
Speaker 1: in the fresco, except if you look closely, she's not
Speaker 1: quite standing straight. Caroline Norton in the House of Lords
Speaker 1: has one hip, slightly insolently, even cocked forever, a little audacious,
Speaker 1: even as she balances the scales of justice. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Dana Shports, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Speaker 1: Hannah Zuick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
Speaker 1: show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
Speaker 1: Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Speaker 1: Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.