Like other women of the middle and upper classes, Carrington defended her brother in a way at least partially in keeping with the conventions of her gender and class. She wrote letters to the Home Office after the trial, rather than appear in court herself to testify to her brother’s character. Women, especially those of upper- and middle-class backgrounds, were more active in private and familial negotiations over sex between men than in public forums. Following this pattern, the middle-class Anne Seymour dealt privately with the man who blackmailed her husband on three occasions, but it was her husband who brought in the constables who made the final arrest.66
The middle-class Mary Legg was also extremely resourceful when dealing with the men who blackmailed her uncle before the case became public. Legg began to suspect that something was the matter when her uncle’s increasingly anxious behavior began to coincide with the disappearance of large sums of money from the household. She began to watch and listen in on him, and by degrees “she obtained some clue to the mystery . . . [until] she intruded herself upon the meetings” where her uncle met with his blackmailers and “demanded an explanation.” At first one of the men involved “said it was not a subject for the interference of a woman” and indicated that it involved allegations of her uncle’s sexual desire for other men. Although Henry Tiddeman “saw tears in Mrs. Legg’s eyes” when he confronted her about the sexual advance that her uncle had made on him, she did not shrink from the confrontation with the four men.67 Mrs. Legg “took part in the negotiations from this time, and made an appointment to meet them all at the shop on Tuesday night, when they fell into a trap.”68 As her sixty-year-old uncle had grown ill from the stress of the extortion and was confined to his bed, Mary dealt with the repeated visits of the four men and their most recent demands for fifty pounds. At their final meeting, she told the extortionists to “walk into the parlour, gentlemen,” and then induced them to recount enough of their extortion activities to allow the hidden constables to pounce from behind the curtains and make the arrest.69
Other women whose male relatives were threatened also stepped in to defend them. Although many parents attempted to deny that their children were actually guilty of the acts they were charged with, Margaret Nugent held more strongly than most that her son Edward had been made the victim of a workplace plot to discredit him.70 Edward was the primary source of support for the family, but at his most recent job he had had a serious dispute with the foreman he worked under. The foreman wanted to replace Edward with a personal friend, but as soon as he did so, the head contractor of the job removed the friend and reinstated Edward. According to Margaret, tensions mounted between the two men to the point at which “the wicked ganger having sworn falsely against my son” made allegations that led to Edward’s imprisonment for two years for unnatural assault.71
When Margaret Nugent wrote the letters to the Home Office on behalf of her son, thus taking on a task that might be seen as belonging to the head of the household, it was not because her husband was deceased or absent. It is clear from the letters that she and her husband were still married and living together, but that since at least the time of Edward’s arrest she had assumed the responsibilities of the head of the household. After arguing for her son’s innocence in her first letter, she began to relate the plight of her family. Most deeply affected, she wrote, was “his father and my husband William Nugent [who] is gone mad and is insane since he has heard what is become of his son.”72 Margaret was left to provide for herself, her husband, and nine other children, most of whom were too young to earn significant wages.
Such representations of the failure of will or health of fathers (more than mothers or other relatives) were common in these cases. Edward Park, “a gentlemanly-looking young man,” invoked the health of his father on his second arrest for making a sexual advance on another man. He reportedly implored to the arresting officer “Oh! Pray don’t; have mercy on me; it nearly broke my father’s heart when a charge was made against me on a former occasion. I am sure it will be the death of him now.”73 The Rev. John Greaves pleaded with the court to let him serve his sentence for attempted unnatural assault in the jail of a county other than his own, so as not to hasten the death of his aged father, who lived nearby.74 It was often the father’s emotional stability that was reported to be most disturbed when a man was convicted or accused of a crime of this type. It was the father who required nursing by the rest of the family, and it was the father’s failing health that was invoked in requests for mercy or pardons. In such times of crisis, it was up to women like Margaret Nugent to take on the responsibilities that were abandoned by their husbands; Margaret continued to look after Edward’s interests as well as those of the rest of her family.75 Margaret’s fourth letter to the Home Office helped to obtain Edward’s early release from Durham jail.76
A working-class woman was much more likely to intervene on behalf of a family member she believed to be innocent than one she believed to be guilty. One of the few such examples of the latter situation, though, is Mary Ann Campbell, who began writing to the home secretary beginning on 24 August 1849. Campbell asked Earl Grey if he could “be pleased to cause a further inquiry into the distressing matter” that had led to her husband, John Campbell, being placed under a sentence of transportation for life.77 Although Mary Ann Campbell was one of the individuals best placed to know the events of that “distressing matter,” she made no effort to explain its specific details. She chose instead to dwell on the hardship of her current situation: after the arrest, she was left to care for three children under nine years of age and was pregnant with a fourth. Almost as an afterthought, at the end of the letter she noted that two of her older sons by a previous marriage had led respectable lives and served in the military in India.
Mary Ann Campbell’s reluctance to dwell on the details of her husband’s case can perhaps be understood in light of the fact that the man her husband was accused of assaulting was Henry Campbell, Mary Ann’s fifteen-year-old son by her previous marriage.78 Mary’s letter was unusual for a petition to the Home Office in that it did not attempt to speak to the good character of the accused or try to deny the charge. She simply asked for “further inquiry into the distressing matter,” as though she could not accept the situation as it was, but could not articulate a preferred outcome, either.
John Campbell was less evasive in his own letter, written just over six months after his conviction but before his actual transportation. He denied that he had made any advance toward his stepson and repeatedly railed against the fact that he was imprisoned on the evidence of “a publican’s pot boy.”79 Campbell argued that “nature required” him and his stepson to stop on Bexley Heath at about 11 o’clock one morning, and it was their making water that the pot boy had actually witnessed. He cited as evidence of his innocence the fact that a medical examination of his stepson, carried out within an hour after their apprehension, did not conclusively prove anal intercourse.80 Campbell also cited his two long marriages and a twenty-year history of steady and sober work as proof of his innocence and good character. There was nothing in these arguments that moved Undersecretary Waddington to recommend a review of the case, though, and the Home Office did not intervene.
Mary Ann’s troubles only increased in the months after the denial of the petitions for her husband. She and her young children spent at least some time in the St. Martin’s Workhouse during the following year, and her economic situation remained dire despite the return of one of her older sons from Bengal. In her letters to the Home Office of the following year, the emphasis on economic over emotional concerns becomes increasingly pronounced. John had since been transported to Bermuda, but she asked the Home Office that he “be sent to some other of the penal settlements where he could have some means of earning something towards the maintenance of his wife and family.”81 The next letter, dated only four months later, further detailed her plight after the death of two of her children, one of whom had been working and was able to bring in a bit of extra money. She closed her letter by writing that she was in an unsustainable circumstance, and that only “God and the Home Department” had the power to save her.82
Although Mary Ann’s situation remained desperate