De Manneville v. De Manneville:Rethinking the Birth of Custody Law under Patriarchy

Abstract

In 1804 Leonard De Manneville, a poor French emigrant to England, forcibly entered his wealthy but estranged wife's house, wrenched his eight-month-old daughter from her mother's breast, and absconded with the naked child in an open carriage in inclement weather. When Mrs. De Manneville applied to King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus, Lord Ellenborough affirmed what he claimed was the well-known rule—that a father was entitled by law to complete custody and control over the children of a marriage and could even prohibit all access by a mother to her children. Frustrated by the law courts, Mrs. De Manneville turned to the self-proclaimed champion of the oppressed, the equity courts, only to find that equity would not interfere with a father's right to custody unless the child had property and was in immediate danger of life and limb. Lord Eldon agreed that “the law is clear that the custody of a child, of whatever age, belongs to the father.” Because Mrs. De Manneville refused to sign over property in her separate estate or execute a will in his favor, her angry husband threatened to prohibit his wife from ever seeing the child again and even to remove the child to France. The law supported his right to carry out his threats.