‘As if she was my own child’: cohabitation,community, and the English criminal courts, 1855–1900

This essay uses evidence from 217 violence cases between cohabiting couples to investigate the reaction of neighbors to irregular relationships. Ostracism was rare as long as the couples did not flaunt their status, for a number of reasons. First, working-class families lived in tenements and row housing that promoted cooperation for survival. Second, women preferred to live near their kin, and families were less disapproving, as they knew the reason for the cohabitation. Third, neighbors often stepped in to fulfill familial roles if kin were absent, encouraging both sisterly and motherly bonds in particular. Fourth, both men and women intervened, though in different ways. Men's participation was especially facilitated by their use of public houses, which was a liminal space that permitted freer discussion of men's personal lives. Fourth, neighborhood values delineated the ‘blame’ for problem families carefully; both men and women could face disapproval for flouting gender norms. Overall, neighbors parsed the reasons for cohabitation, the harm done by the couple to others, and whether the couple was disruptive in other ways before accepting or rejecting cohabitants in their midst. Indeed, drunkenness and violence was more of a problem than sexual nonconformity in most of these cases.     

Thailand today

Mervyn Matthews, retired, was formerly Reader in Soviet Studies at the University of Surrey, Guildford. Since 1996 he has been resident for part of the year in Thailand, where he writes and pursues research interests.     

Reviews

G.R. Batho: Thomas Harriot and the Northumberland Household; W.A. Wallace: John White, Thomas Harriot and Walter Raleigh in Ireland; M.P. Earles: The London Pharmacopoeia Perfected (The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar, Occasional Papers, Nos. 1, 2 and 3, 1983–5; £8.10).

Michael Mendle: Dangerous Positions, Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the ‘Answer to the XIX Propositions’ (University of Alabama Press, 1985; pp. 256; £28.50. Distributed in the U.K. by Eurospan, 3 Henrietta Street, London).     

Nuclear Terrorism Post-9/11: Assessing the Risks

This paper discusses, with an emphasis on the technical issues involved, some of the possible forms that nuclear terrorism might take, loosely referring to all forms of terrorism involving radioactive materials, such as crude nuclear weapons, radiological dispersal devices, and attacks on the nuclear infrastructure, including nuclear reactors. The first two forms of terrorism necessarily depend on terrorists' obtaining suitable materials, so the problem of nuclear smuggling, especially from the former Soviet Union (FSU), with its huge and decrepit nuclear complex, is addressed, as is the region's reservoir of unemployed or underemployed nuclear expertise. The West, however, is not ignored. As one observer remarked, Osama bin Laden might soon have more luck shopping for nuclear materials there than in the FSU. The paper concludes that although it is most unlikely that terrorists will detonate a true nuclear weapon, the other forms are real and pressing threats.     

THE ROLE OF SOLICITORS IN DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS*

“I was walking down the boulevard one day with my sister who was down for a week's holiday. She said off the cuff ‘When are you going to get divorced?’ I said ‘I don't know.’ Seeing a solicitor's office, I said ‘ I'll pop in here’—just the job, just like going in the shop for a loaf of bread. So I sees the receptionist. She said ‘ I'll see if he can see you straight away.’ Well, he gave me an interview straight away. Within an hour everything was done. He told me to bring all the gen I could in a couple of weeks time, which I did and then we got on with the job.”