Sexual Slander in Nineteenth-Century England: Defamation in the Ecclesiastical Courts, 1815-1855 (review)

Abstract

S. M. Waddams has written a careful analysis of sexual slander cases in the ecclesiastical courts in England and Wales in the early-nineteenth century. The research for this work is impressive. Waddams has explored the court records for the twenty-eight dioceses in England, Wales, and the Isle of Man, as well as the papers of William Askwith, a proctor of the York consistory court. In the process, he has amassed a sample of approximately 650 sexual slander cases which occurred during the last forty years that the church courts heard such cases (Parliament abolished the ecclesiastical courts' jurisdiction over defamation cases in 1855). He then discusses this type of action in three major sections: the background of the law, the workings of the court, and the cases themselves.