Content Note: Please be aware that this blog post contains descriptions of domestic abuse. It also includes historic language about deafness, directly quoted from a historic source. While we would not use this language ourselves, we have retained it here to accurately reflect the 19th century source material.
On 25 July 1876, a solicitor by the name of Redgrave attended the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes to enter an application for an Order of Protection under Section 21 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 on behalf of Mrs Mary Ann Gray, a dressmaker from Sheffield. This radical section of the Act could revert a wife’s legal status to that of a feme sole in all respects (except the ability to remarry) providing they could prove that (i) they had been deserted by their husband without good cause and (ii) that they were financially supporting themselves. Mary Ann’s initial application stated that she had been a widow with a 13-year-old daughter, Mary, when she married a Mr William Gray in Sheffield on 25 October 1869. Sadly, the relationship had quickly soured, and in August 1870 both Mary Ann and Mary had been forced to leave ‘for protection from his [William’s] ill treatment, threats and violence’, which was swiftly followed by William deserting her. The relationship had fallen apart just ten months after their wedding day but fortunately Mary Ann managed to reestablish herself in trade and eventually acquired some household furniture and effects, along with an inheritance of £105 (the equivalent of £12,480 today).
Compared to divorce cases, there were relatively few applications for Orders of Protection heard at the Divorce Court because the vast majority were dealt with by police courts, magistrates courts, or petty sessions. We don’t know don’t why Mary Ann made her application in London rather than Sheffield, but the details in her initial application were fairly typical, with the notable exception that both Mary Ann and her husband William were recorded in the legal documents to be ‘deaf and dumb’. As was often the case, Judge Ordinary Sir James Hannen requested further information from Mary Ann, and in her subsequent affidavit she gave much more information about both her relationship with William, and the way she navigated nineteenth century society as someone who was deaf and non-verbal.
Mary Ann’s written testimony explained that William had been violent from the beginning of their marriage, beating her with his fists and treating her with ‘great cruelty’. The violence had escalated and on 6 August 1870, William returned to the house and once again set about beating Mary Ann, this time strangling her until she began to lose consciousness. It was only the intervention of their neighbours that stopped the attack. After this incident, Mary Ann’s daughter fled the house and after William ‘locked the door and took out a carving knife and by his looks and gestures gave me to understand that he intended to use it upon me’, Mary Ann managed to make her escape too.
Mary Ann and Mary (who appears to have been able to hear and speak) both gave evidence through affidavits that were written and sworn in Sheffield and then presented to the Court by Mary Ann’s solicitor. There is nothing in the file to suggest that they had to appear in Court in person (which the Judge Ordinary could have requested) and so we don’t know how the Court might have adapted its practices (or not) to accommodate Mary Ann who would have been both unable to hear the questions posed by Sir James Hannen, or to answer him verbally as was usual practice. Census records reveal that Mary Ann had been born deaf and non-verbal, but her application for an Order of Protection showed that she could ‘read and write having been educated at the Doncaster Deaf and Dumb Institution’. This residential school was established in 1829 and still operates today under the name the Doncaster School for the Deaf. The School’s Archivist Mr A J Boyce, managed to find Mary Ann in their records and discovered that she had been admitted to the ‘Yorkshire Institute for the Deaf and Dumb’ (YIDD) in 1841 and spent three years at the school, leaving in 1844 to live with her father Joseph, a stove-fitter, her mother Sarah and her three siblings (all of whom were born hearing and verbal). The minister of the Rotherham parish where she lived reported in 1847 that Mary Ann ‘has been industriously at home and has conducted herself very well since she left school’. An education at YIDD cost approximately £6 per year (roughly £690 today) and would have been beyond the means of many families, including Mary Ann’s, who were all manual workers. Thankfully, a clause in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 allowed the local Board of Guardians to make provision for children with hearing loss in their parish, without requiring the parents to be paupers and Mary Ann was taught to read and write, and the trade of dressmaking.
It is no exaggeration to say that the education that Mary Ann received at YIDD, together with her training as a dressmaker saved her life. Being literate enabled Mary Ann to communicate the appalling details of her marriage to William with her solicitor in Sheffield, and her ability to pick up a needle and earn her own living enabled her to meet the criteria for an Order of Protection. William Gray was last heard of living in a lodging house in Hyde, Manchester and what happened to him is unknown. Mary Ann, seemingly keen to forget all about her brief second marriage, reverted to using the surname of her first husband and subsequent census records show her living with her daughter Mary and son-in-law Frederick W. Bramhall, at their grocer’s shop on Talbot Street, Sheffield, and then later with her sister-in-law. Interestingly, her son-in-law Frederick – who was the son of a butcher – was also recorded as ‘deaf and dumb’ on census returns and a search of the YIDD archives revealed that he too was a pupil there from 1866 to 1871. This slim file from the J 77 Divorce Court archive therefore offers a tantalising glimpse into both procedure surrounding deafness in the Victorian court system, and also the important role that specialist schooling provided by institutions such as YIDD had for working class children in the nineteenth century.
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Many thanks to A. J. Boyce of the Doncaster School for the Deaf for his generous assistance.
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If you’ve been affected by any of the content in this blog you can seek support from the following organisations:
RNID (Royal National Institute for Deaf People can be contacted via https://rnid.org.uk/about-us/contact-rnid/
Women’s Aid run a Live Chat service between 8am-6pm weekdays and 10am-6pm on weekends, along with other online services and the UK Domestic Abuse Directory for your local domestic abuse service at www.womensaid.org.uk
The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0808 2000 247 (run by Refuge).
The Men’s Advice Line, for male domestic abuse survivors is 0808 801 0327 (run by Respect).
The National LGBT+ Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0800 999 5428 (run by Galop).
If you are in immediate danger always call 999.