John Benson, "Respectability, Bankruptcy and Bigamy in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain "
English | ISBN: 036776685X | 2022 | 146 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Respectability, Bankruptcy and Bigamy in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain explores the vexed question of middle-class respectability in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It focuses upon the life of London solicitor Hamilton Pawley (1860-1936), who was barred from working by the Law Society, twice declared bankrupt, and in 1919 was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment with hard labour for bigamously marrying a woman practically forty years his junior. If Pawley did not suffer the revenge of respectable society, it is difficult to think who would.