Couple's court case was an affair to remember

Beau Lane looks at a West Country divorce case from Victorian times which was more than usually scandalous, not just because both parties were having affairs, but because of who they were having affairs with ...

- 

The Divorce Court, about 1870. To respectable Victorians, having your marital problems exposed in public was humiliating

(SEPIA TIMES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In September 1874, a young upper-class couple, Stanley Smith and Catharine Phayre, were married in Bath. They lived together in Timsbury, where their four children, Charles, Annesley, Edith, and Edward, were born.

The Smiths’ social standing suited each other perfectly. Stanley was described as a “gentleman of independent means” — and Catharine as “a lady by birth and education”.

But six years into their marriage Stanley Smith filed for divorce, accusing Catharine of adultery with his own groom, Albert Whittock.

Whittock himself lived with his own wife near the Smiths’ residence.

In the Divorce Division of the High Court in London, Stanley, supported by the testimony of a few eyewitnesses, claimed his wife and the groom Albert were unusually familiar with one another. They would meet often, in the stables, the greenhouse, and even beyond the Smith's residence.