Following last week’s post, more is revealed about the female husband found in Manchester. Apparently, female husbands have been known for centuries. A recent book by Jen Manion comprises dozens of anecdotes and narratives detailing the lives of people who were considered girls at birth but who adopted masculine names and loved and lived with female wives. Also, Henry Fielding’s novel, ‘The female husband’, fictionalised the life of Mrs. Mary, alias Mr. George, Hamilton.
“THE WOMAN HUSBAND.–Subsequent enquiries confirm the truth of the statements made in the Manchester Guardian of the 11th, as to this singular case. This woman-man who for probably more than 25 years has succeeded in concealing her sex, and in pursuing a trade of a more than ordinarily masculine and hazardous description, with a degree of skill and ability which has led to her establishment in a good business in Manchester, bound herself apprentice, at the age of 16 or 17 years, to a Mr. Peacock, a bricklayer and builder at Bawtry, a small market town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on the River Idle, which separates the counties of York and Nottingham. She did not remain with Mr. Peacock during the whole period of her apprenticeship, but was ‘turned over,’ as it is called, to another person in the same business. It was during her apprenticeship that she met with her present wife ; and they were married at the old parish church of Sheffield, in the year 1816, when the wife was only 17 years of age. Since the investigation and disclosure of the circumstances on Thursday week, the wife and husband have separated. The latter was for many years a special constable, in the 13th division of that body ; acting for Manchester ; and we are assured that, on all occasions where the services of the division were required, as at elections, orange processions, meetings of trades’ unions, turn-outs, &c. &c., so far from absenting herself, from what, as in the case of well-grounded apprehensions of a riot, must have been, to a woman, a post of some unpleasantness, she is remembered to have been one of the most punctual in attendance, and the most forward volunteer in actual duty, in that division. We understand that she is only no longer a special constable, because she did not, on the last annual special session, held for that purpose at the New Bailey, present herself to be re-sworn. She was not discarded or discharged ; there was no complaint against her ; and probably the extension of her own business was her only motive for not resuming the duties of this office. Altogether, this is by far the most singular case of the kind which has ever reached our knowledge. The celebrated Chevalier D’Eon was not married ; and James Davis (so-called), the discovery of whose sex took place only after death, had not been married for so long a period as the woman whose case is now under notice. There, too, the discovery was made too late to obtain from the party herself any clue to the motives which led her to so unfeminine a course of deception ; but here both parties to the supposed marriage are alive, and the one who assumed the male sex is still alive to give, if she chooses, the true history of her reasons or fancy for laying aside the garb and character of her own, and assuming the appearance, and undertaking the toil, of the other sex, which would certainly be a very curious chapter of biography.–Manchester Guardian of Saturday last.”
The Stamford Mercury, 20th April, 1838.