Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T22:33:09.663Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Secrets and Lies: The Queen's Proctor and Judicial Investigation of Party Controlled Narratives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Wendie Ellen Schneider
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Driven by the fear of collusion in the new divorce court, in 1860 Parliament authorized the Queen's Proctor to intervene in divorce suits by rooting out information that the parties left undisclosed. This paper explores the activities of the Queen's Proctor in its first quarter century, revealing both the curious genealogy of community participation in the Queen's Proctor's efforts and the struggle over the definition of collusion. Over time, economic and evidentiary concerns prompted the Queen's Proctor to turn from uncovering collusion to producing evidence of adultery. The Queen's Proctor represents a striking attempt by courts to assess the validity of party-controlled narratives, resulting in surprising practical consequences. Evaluation of narratives quickly devolved into a bright-line test focusing on adultery, with judges following the Queen's Proctor's lead and eschewing discretion.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Summer 2002 , pp. 449 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2002 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amsterdam, Anthony G., and Bruner, Jerome. 2000. Minding the Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Olive. 1999. State, Civil Society and Separation in Victorian Marriage. Past & Present 163: 161–201.Google Scholar
Baron, Jane B. 1991. The Many Promises of Storytelling in Law. Rutgers Law Journal 23: 79–105.Google Scholar
Baron, Jane B., and Epstein, Julia. 1997. Is Law Narrative Buffalo Law Review 45: 141–87.Google Scholar
Basch, Norma. 1999. Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Victorians. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Beamer, J. G. 1942. The Doctrine of Recrimination in Divorce Proceedings. University of Kansas City Law Review 10: 213–56.Google Scholar
Bennett, W. Lance, and Feldman, Martha S. 1981. Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter, and Gewirtz, Paul, eds. 1996. Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law. New Haven . Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Brougham, Henry. 185859. Remarks on Certain Defects in the Procedure vorce Court. Law Magazine and Review 6: 380–85.Google Scholar
Brougham, Henry. 1859. The Divorce Court. Law Magazine and Review 7: 166–70.Google Scholar
Browne, George. 1880. A Treatise on the Principles and Practice of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. 4th ed. London: Henry Sweet.Google Scholar
Campbell-Praed, Rosa. 1887. The Bond of Wedlock: A Tale of London Life. 2 vols. London: F. V. White.Google Scholar
Crispe, Thomas Edward. 1909. Reminiscences of a K. C. London: Methuen & Co.Google Scholar
Cunningham, Clark D. 1989. A Tale of Two Clients: Thinking About Law as Language. Michigan Law Review 87: 2459–94.Google Scholar
Damaška, Mirjan R. 1986. The Faces of Justice and State Authority: A Comparative Approach to the Legal Process. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Decrees Nisi in Divorce, 1862. Law Magazine and Review 13: 147–58.Google Scholar
Desart, Earl, and Lubbock, Sybil. 1936. A Page from the Past: The Memoirs of the Earl of Desart. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Director of Public Prosecutions. 1884. Law Journal, June 21, 394–95.Google Scholar
Duxbury, Neil. 1991. Jerome Frank and the Legacy of Legal Realism. Journal of Law and Society 18: 175–205.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. LI. J. 1964. The Law Officers of the Crown. London: Sweet and Maxwell.Google Scholar
Erickson, Amy Louise. 1993. Women and Property in Early Modern England. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Farber, Daniel A., and Sherry, Suzanna. 1993. Telling Stories Out of School: An Essay on Legal Nartatives. Stanford Law Review 45: 807–55.Google Scholar
Farber, Daniel A., and Sherry, Suzanna. 1996. Legal Storytelling and Constitutional Law: The Medium and the Message. In Brooks and Gewirtz 1996, 37–53.Google Scholar
Fenn, Henry Edwin. 1910. Thirty-Five Years in the Divorce Court. London: Werner Laurie.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Robert A. 1996. Untold Stories in the Law. In Brooks and Gewirtz 1996, 84–98.Google Scholar
Frank, Jerome. 1963. Courts on Trial: Myths and Reality in American Justice. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1949. Reprint, New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Gewirtz, Paul. 1996. Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law. In Brooks and Gewirtz 1996, 2–13.Google Scholar
Hammerton, A. James. 1992. Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-century Married Life. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hansard Parliamentary Debates. 1859. 3d ser., Vol. 155. United Kingdom .Google Scholar
Hansard Parliamentary Debates. 1860. 3d ser., vols. 157–60. United Kingdom .Google Scholar
Hansard Parliamentary Debates. 1878. 3d ser., vol. 238. United Kingdom .Google Scholar
Hansard Parliamentary Debates. 1888. 3d ser., vol. 239. United Kingdom .Google Scholar
Harris, Janice Hubbard. 1996. Edwardian Stories of Divorce. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Hartog, Hendrik. 2000. Man and Wife in America: A History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Holmes, Sumner Ann. 1986. Hard Cases and Bad Laws: Divorce Reform in England, 1909-37. Ph. D. diss., Vanderbilt University.Google Scholar
Holmes, , 1995. The Double Standard in the English Divorce Laws, 1857-1923. Law and Social Inquiry 20: 601–20.Google Scholar
Horstman, Allen. 1985. Victorian Divorce. London: Croom and Helm.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Travers. 1954. The History of Perjury. Quarterly Review 292: 294–301.Google Scholar
Hyman, David A. 1998. Lies, Damned Lies, and Narrative. Indiana Law Review 73: 797–851.Google Scholar
Intervention of the Queen's Proctor. 189596. Law Magazine and Review, 4th ser., 21: 327–38.Google Scholar
Jackson, Bernard S. 1988. Law, Fact, and Narrative Coherence. Liverpool: Deborah Charles.Google Scholar
Law Evidence Amendment Bill. 1866. Solicitor's Journal, Mar. 10: 433, 443.Google Scholar
Leckie, Barbara. 1999. Culture and Adultery: The Novel, the Newspaper, and the Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lobban, Michael. 2000. Henry Brougham and Law Reform. English Historical Review 115: 1184–215.Google Scholar
McGregor, O. R. 1957. Divorce in England: A Centenary Study. London: William Heinemann.Google Scholar
McMaster, R. D. 1986. Trollope and the Law. London: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Michigan Law Review. Legal Storytelling (Symposium). 1989. Michigan Law Review 87: 2073–494.Google Scholar
Francis, Mr. Dyke, Hart (obituary of). 1876. Solicitor's Journal, July 22, 748.Google Scholar
Nesson, Charles. 1985. The Evidence or the Event? On Judicial Proof and the Acceptability of Verdicts. Harvard Law Review 98: 1357–92.Google Scholar
New Divorce Bill and the Queen's Proctor. 1860. Solicitor's Journal, April 14, 443–44.Google Scholar
Papke, David Ray, ed. 1991. Narrative and the Legal Discourse: A Reader in Storytelling and the Law. Liverpool: Deborah Charles.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers. 1873. Return of cases in which the Queen's Proctor has intervened in the Court of Divorce, pp. 1873 liv. 85.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers. 1877a. Return of number of cases in which the Queen's Proctor has intervened in divorce suits in 1874 and 1875, PP. 1877 Ixix: 287.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers. 1877b. Return of number of cases in which the Queen's Proctor has intervened in divorce suits in 1876, pp. 1877 Ixix. 289.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers. 1892. Prosecution of Offences Act., PP 1892 Ixvi: 163.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Oxford, England: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Pemble, John. 1996. Venice Rediscovered. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perjury in Divorce Cases. 1888. Times, July 27, p. 13, col. c.Google Scholar
Phillimore, Robert J. 1866. Address on Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law. In Transactions of the National Association for Promotion of the Social Sciences, ed. Hastings, George. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Practice in Divorce. 1868. Law Times, January 11, p. 198.Google Scholar
Practice of the Divorce Court. 1874. Law Magazine and Review, 3d ser., 3: 775–88.Google Scholar
Queen's Proctor. 1875. Law Journal, August 28, p. 501.Google Scholar
Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes (Royal Commission). 1912. Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. 3 vols. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and William, L. Felstiner, F. 1986. Law and Strategy in the Divorce Lawyer's Office. Law and Society Review 20: 93–134.Google Scholar
Savage, Gail L. 1983. Operation of the 1857 Divorce Act, 1860-1910, A Research Note. Journal of Social. History 16: 103–10.Google Scholar
Savage, Gail L. 1988. Divorce and the Law in England and France Prior to the First World War. Journal of Social History 21: 499–513.Google Scholar
Savage, Gail L. 1989. The Divorce Court and the Queen's/King's Proctor: Legal Patriarchy and the Sanctimony of Marriage in England, 1861-1937. In Historical Papers: A Selection from the Papers Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, ed. Johnson, Dana and Désilets, Andrée, 210–17. Ottawa, Ontario: Bonanza Press.Google Scholar
Savage, Gail L. 1992. “Intended Only for the Husband”: Gender, Class, and the Provision for Divorce in England, 1858-1868. In Victorian Scandals: Representations of Gender and Class, ed. Ottesen Garrigan, Kristine, 11–42. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Scheppele, Kim Lane. 1989. Foreword: Telling Stories. Michigan Law Review 87: 2073–98.Google Scholar
Scheppele, Kim Lane. 1995. Manners of Imagining the Real. Law and Social Inquiry 20: 995–1022.Google Scholar
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 1989. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. 1978. Family Secrets and Domestic Subversion. In The Victorian Family: Structure and Stresses, ed. Wohl, Anthony. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Spring, Eileen. 1993. Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Staves, Susan. 1990. Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1660–1833. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Lawrence. 1995. Road to Divorce: A History of the Making and Breaking of Marriage in England. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trollope, Anthony. 1974. He Knew He Was Right. 1868. Reprint, Queensland: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Woodhouse, Margaret K. 1959. The Marriage and Divorce Bill of 1857. American Journal of Legal History 3: 260–75.Google Scholar