Till Death Do Us Part: Laborers’ Marriage Practices in Late Victorian New Zealand

Introduction

Dunedin's Maclaggan Street was one of those streets notorious for its nightlife, packed with drinking establishments, a theater, and brothels. In the 1870s, it was a destination for railway workers coming into town at the end of a contract. They were ‘on the spree’, splashing cash, seeking entertainment, and settling scores. On 21 December 1875, Jessie Cheriton was there with her lover, Charles Davis, when they encountered Jessie's husband Henry. ¹ Jessie and Henry were brought to New Zealand by John Brogden and Sons, as part of the Vogel Government scheme to build a national railway network. Fists and insults flew, police were called and all three were locked up to calm down until they could appear before a magistrate. The City Police Court heard from Jessie first, who declared Henry had blacked her eyes within weeks of their marriage, and thereafter continued to ill-treat and threaten her. She had taken up with Charles, who was able to keep her comfortable and happy, unlike her husband. Henry denied any mistreatment and said she created her own trouble with her temper and ‘improper conduct’. Charles testified to witnessing Henry hitting Jessie with a flat iron in their home. He said he had taken pity on her, with the obvious result that she had moved in under his protection.

The Cheriton's brawl brought the private world of marriage to the public attention of town residents, police, and the courts. Their behavior reinforced popular perceptions of lax morality, violence, and intemperance among the industrial working classes. Brogdens’ Navvies were recruited as experienced railway navvies (laborers who specialized in the building of railways, roads, and canals) and associated trades, and together they had the essential skills in railway construction needed by the English railway contractors. Individuals from the group were often referred to as Brogdenites. But these navvies were not regarded as the right type of migrant by a government and colony intent on attracting a flood of agricultural laborers, farmers, skilled tradesmen, and single women ‘of good character’. ² Once in New Zealand, the group attracted media attention and was labeled ‘the denizens of the back slums of the home cities’ wont to ‘bully their employers, get drunk and fight’. ³ Few anticipated good moral conduct or strong familial ties between the navvies and their wives and families. ⁴ Despite some debate by historians over whether working people on the margins of society accepted marriage as a viable and important institution in their lives, this article demonstrates that for the most part, Brogdens’ Navvies married, and married they stayed. In fact, after the first flurry of aberrant behavior and as they worked their way – quite literally – into New Zealand society, the navvies seemed, to the disappointment of many, surprisingly normal. This article studies Brogdens’ Navvies, a cross-section of British skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers and their families, and explores the prevalence of different marriage behaviors among the group. It attempts to explain findings of marriage breakdown and informal marriages (including bigamous relationships). It will explore the extent to which it was evidence of an incorrigible navvy identity, or instead suggests a cultural practice of informal alternatives to end marriages and start new relationships indicating a wider practice and tolerance of informal marriage. In exploring informal marriage and its place in these communities, it would appear such arrangements were largely not based on rejections of social and religious norms. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this study shows that where couples were known to be in some form of informal marriage, there is evidence of social allowance for, and acceptance of, these relationships, suggesting such arrangements were based on a general tolerance recognizing the inaccessibility and high cost, socially and financially, of divorce.

In exploring these issues, several related matters emerge. The highly mobile nature of society, both in local and global terms, provided opportunities to escape what otherwise might have been tighter legal constraints and social conventions concerning marriage. At the same time, the surprisingly conventional attitudes to marriage among a group of men and women who were often treated as outsiders, portrayed as being subject to drunkenness and violence and as testing standard understandings of gendered roles, on the one hand, shows a willingness to conform, to be part of a larger society and to embrace some form of respectability, and on the other the porous nature of class identities in nineteenth-century New Zealand. In the end, these ‘outsiders’ appear to be, historically, much more like everyone else than might be expected, and they allow us a slightly different understanding of the nature of conventional behavior, values, and morality when related to gender roles and family.

Method

We know about the Cheritons because they attracted public attention, but the marriage behaviors of others remained hidden in the private world of family. Locating these practices, while still far from easy, has become increasingly possible through the academic exploitation of websites developed to cater to family historians, reflecting the increasingly common use of non-traditional digital research sources in scholarly practice. New Zealand, with its small populace and links to the British Empire which encouraged early adoption of centralized record-keeping, may be unusually suited to this type of study. For example, in many cases a person with a distinctive name was the only one in the colony, making their presence or absence in marriage and death records obvious. However, the colony's early destruction of census material has deprived researchers of a valuable evidence source for individuals and couple relationship trends. Digital genealogy sources now provide excellent tools to fill some of these gaps. The proliferation of commercial websites such as Ancestry and Findmypast enables online access to many digitized primary sources. In addition, online family trees can provide essential clues for those Brogdens’ Navvies who settled, as well as those who moved on, particularly those transplanting to Australian states or returning home. Caution is needed, however, as some websites allow a superficial approach, with ‘granny-hunters’ quickly cobbling together records for individuals without verifying the facts or even applying basic logic.

In this article, these sources have been used to research the lives of those identified as traveling as part of the navvy group. Brogdens’ Navvies numbered 2,148 people, comprising 1202 men, 354 women, and 425 children. Although incomplete and missing passenger lists mean there is no full list of those migrating, at least 564 men, 235 women, and 285 children were traced as settling in New Zealand: 1084 from the 1754 immigrants identified. ⁵ Of the 364 couples who arrived, 276 could be confirmed as settling, while others moved on. Only a few passenger lists recorded the navvies’ ages and from those, it was calculated that 80 percent of the men were under thirty, with the spread from fourteen to fifty, the average age being twenty-five.

Recruiting targeted young men, and many, like Henry Cheriton who had married in 1871, had married between 1868 and 1872. Nevertheless, over nine hundred men traveled alone but tracing single men in any colonial environment is not easy. Some had similar or common names, passenger lists varied in recording identifying detail while some young single men moved on quickly and thus remain elusive to the historian. There were 188 indistinguishable single men and thirty indistinguishable family men in the group, with names like John Smith, William Harris, and one using a known alias of Harry Jones. On the other hand, some women left good evidence in official records and the newspapers, despite often being difficult to locate in the historical record. Children aided research into families when enrolled in state schools or placed in the Industrial School system. Furthermore, not all life events were officially registered. Deaths, for example, were sometimes registered under an incorrect name, and some are indexed erroneously or not at all. Likewise, births of children to couples in informal marriages can be difficult to locate, even if registered. The data, however, does allow some analysis of origins and life-paths to be undertaken, and offers a way to examine attitudes to marriage and marital breakdown in the wider community.

Brogdens’ Navvies?

When Brogdenites arrived in New Zealand they brought with them all the stigma of being navvies, industrial workers. They were expected to lack the civilizing determination to be upwardly mobile and the social stability attributed to agricultural laborers. Within the colony, people argued navvies were nomadic, thus unlikely to become farmers, with one commentator saying, ‘They belong to the migrating rather than to the immigrating classes’. ⁶ By reputation, they were ‘loud of voice and rude of speech’ and fueled by beef and beer. ⁷ Some sources called them ‘Brogden's black sheep’ ‘whose greatest delight is drinking and rioting’ and ‘a coarse looking rowdy lot of men, … as ignorant as savages’. ⁸ Historians writing about navvies often draw on the 1879 work of Daniel William Barrett, a missioner in England's railway camps. Barrett's book was the source of numerous myths about navvies, including their beef and beer consumption, and his subjective and unsupported claims have influenced perceptions since. Some historians have tended to agree with this rough and ready depiction of navvy life. James Belich describes navvies in New Zealand as part of a coherent ‘crew’ culture, ‘mobile, male, and prone to binge and hit each other’. ⁹ Jock Phillip's itinerant male culture of drinking, ‘swearing, gambling…and offending stable society’ also fits the image of the ‘typical’ navvy. ¹⁰

However, Brogdens’ Navvies were not the coherent social group assumed by popular prejudices of the time. The occupational label of navvy, with its associations with beer-drinking, brawling, and rowdy behavior, came with their recruitment as railway builders. The group was depicted as composed of typical navvies, a portrayal at odds with the report of the man who approved their selection. Government immigration agents influenced the Brogden firm's selections and insisted on bringing out couples and families versus only single men. They also favored agricultural laborers over general laborers. Notably, experienced railway builders – navvies, platelayers, and gangers – numbered only 299 men (23 percent) of the total navvy group according to the official report. ¹¹ A further five percent were in railway building-related trades including bricklayers, carpenters, and masons. These experts were supplemented by unskilled laborers, such as agricultural workers used to heavy outdoor work, who were expected to learn on the job. ¹² This mixed composition model was typical in British railway building. The group contained a cross-section of unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled British working people who fit the ‘working classes’ label used in New Zealand at the time rather than the tighter British concept of ‘working-class’. Working classes was the looser term used in the Victorian period and applied collectively to manual workers including farmers and settlers as well as laborers. ¹³ This article refers to these navvies as laborers, working people, and part of the working classes. Illustrating the complexities of class in the colonial context, people slipped into the role of navvy to find work, and possibly to emigrate, but then slipped out as easily as they reverted to previous occupations or shifted to other roles in their new location.

The picture of a cohesive working classes group, however, is complicated by the finding that those recruited were drawn from a more diverse range of occupations than shown in the official figures. The 1871 English census shows recruits included brewers, butchers, sailors, mariners, shipwrights, and fishermen as well as boot and shoemakers, and the less desirable former soldiers and navy hands. Therefore, despite the navvy label, group members can be seen as similar to assisted immigrants of the same period. Like other arrivals in the colony, they were a mixed bunch, although supposed to be drawn from agricultural areas.

Some of the Brogdenites chosen were amongst England's poorest, needing loans to make the journey, and it was only after these were offered that the immigration drive was a success. The selection process endeavored to exclude the incorrigible element: those with undesirable social traits unwilling or unable to reform. This included former soldiers, sailors, and workhouse inhabitants, “reduced tradesmen” and any without evidence of good character. ¹⁴ Some slipped through, however, including a few in informal marriages like the Saundercocks. Joseph Saundercock was living with his housekeeper Ann Saunders in 1871, with three Saunders children. The youngest was probably fathered by Joseph. ¹⁵ They traveled as the Saundercock family and in 1895 Joseph finally married Ann in the tiny New Zealand township where they were long-time residents. Likewise, some bigamous marriages pre-dated arrival in New Zealand. For example, Henry Applegate undertook a bigamous marriage to Grace Wilson just before he signed on with Brogdens and left his first wife and daughter Charlotte behind. ¹⁶ Grace also left behind her mariner husband and two sons. ¹⁷ The Applegates participated as a married couple in their new community, living in Dunedin's Caversham suburb while Henry worked in railway construction. The Applegates had a daughter Eliza who knew of her half-sister in England, including her married name, but never met her. ¹⁸ These examples are significant as they suggest the practice of informal marriage was imported from their British homeland, an alternative cultural norm rather than a new solution specific to the New Zealand colonial setting.

Nor did the other behaviors necessarily conform to the navvy stereotype. On arrival, the navvies and their families lived in remote camps as work on the railways began. During this time, workers were sometimes criticized in the press for acting like navvies when at leisure, while other reports criticized them for not being typical navvies at work. ¹⁹ While newspapers pointed to hard living and hard drinking, there was discipline within the camps as construction took priority, fulfilling navvies’ reputation for hard work. Perhaps noticeable misbehavior was not an intrinsic navvy trait but reflected the pattern of work in remote areas isolated from towns with recreation bringing them into towns as they relaxed and spent their money: it reflected the nature of the work rather than the social mores of the working community.

One of the more significant observations about class in New Zealand is that the small population made social mixing an everyday experience. In the 1870s, two-thirds of the population lived in tiny towns, townships, and farms and depended on each other as neighbors and friends, while even in cities many areas had mixed neighborhoods where manual workers, both skilled and unskilled, lived near employers and the office-bound. ²⁰ The inevitable social connections made in small workplaces, sports teams, schools, neighborhoods, community, and church organizations allowed conservative middle-class values to permeate through these relationships. This had two effects: residential location did not adequately reflect social status in the way occupation did and workers generally held less radical views than in other societies. ²¹ Historians increasingly reject a sharply defined class framework in this period of New Zealand history and argue class relationships were important but largely operated without conflict. ²² These ideas are present in the value placed on work and the dignity of labor, reflected in the gradual adoption of the eight-hour day from 1840. ²³ In 1974, and beginning his career, historian Erik Olssen favored a class consciousness model acting towards a common political or economic end. ²⁴ After thirty-five years working on the Caversham Project studying the earliest industrial suburb, he argued for the notion of a classless society in which class had been deliberately decentralized from social structures. However, social mixing and egalitarianism do not preclude the existence of a working-class culture. ²⁵

At the end of their contract period or before, some Brogdenites returned to previous occupations or trades and lived in urban settings. Some tried a different line of work, becoming hotel proprietors, motor experts, or billiard markers. About ten percent settled as farmers on small farms. ²⁶ More settled in the tiny railway communities they had founded. ²⁷ Between thirty and fifty men, both married and single, took advantage of the continued railway building program and remained in that line of work. Another hundred were laborers, and some could have continued to build and maintain railways. William Carter arrived in New Zealand with a thirty-year employment history with the Brogdens, and a willingness to relocate wherever he was required. ²⁸ Alfred Silvester, a surfaceman, was on the permanent staff by 1873, while ganger Edwin Tantrum spent his career moving regularly for his work. ²⁹ From itinerant navvy to stable railway worker was a lifestyle change, a form of settling down. Alfred Silvester arrived with his wife Mary, worked on the railways in the south, was father to sixteen children, and long-time member of the Foresters Lodge. ³⁰ One son also served the New Zealand Railways, and another was a Gallipoli veteran. Despite their disreputable labeling, most Brogdens’ Navvies who settled moved into communities close to where they had originally worked found jobs that fitted their skills, married, had children, and played their part in church, school, and other social institutions.

The Prevalence of Marriage

The young men recruited for the rough outdoor work meant the Brogden group had a higher unmarried proportion in comparison to the New Zealand resident adult population. New Zealand government statistics collected information on adults’ marital status as shown in Table 1. A gender imbalance resulting from the previous decade's gold rushes was added to rather than amended by the arrival of the Brogden group's 364 married couples, 980 single people, and 425 children, given in official figures. With children excluded, the group was 55 percent single men, 2.3 percent single women, and 42.6 percent married people.

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Table 1.

Percentages of the New Zealand adult European population in the various marital status categories at the time of the Government census, from the time just before Brogdens’ navvies arrival. Figures derived from 1916 and other census statistics found at www3.stats.govt.nz/historical_publications/.

	1871	1874	1878	1881	1886	1896	1906	1916
unmarried	46.67	35.6	32.5	32.35	31.8	34.95	36.35	27.64
married	48.76	59.2	62.22	62.15	62.51	57.93	56.50	64.55
widowed	3.8	4.86	4.94	5.27	5.92	6.92	6.68	7.30
divorced						0.04	0.12	0.22
not stated	1.63	0.34	0.34	0.2	0.58	0.16	0.23	0.29

Among the Brogden group who settled in New Zealand, 44.3 percent arrived as part of a married couple, and another 40 percent married in New Zealand. Of the single men who settled in New Zealand, 201 married locally while ninety-eight never married. For another eighteen men, it is unclear if they married with several possible marriages. Some married in New Zealand before migrating onwards. A few took their time finding a partner to settle down with and first-time marriages for adult Brogden men continued until the century's close. The official figures for the group sent include forty single women, found as daughters aged over twelve, and sisters of the men. Only one sister is known to have remained single, housekeeping for her bachelor brother, and almost all the ‘adult’ women married, including Alice Frost, daughter of a Brogdens’ Navvy, who married navvy William Angell. ³¹ Those arriving as children usually also married and often produced large families, adhering to norms of family behavior.

This inclination contrasts with some historians arguing the English lower classes had little interest in marriage and were thus more likely to practice marriage alternatives. ³² Another view was advanced at the turn of the twentieth century by Charles Booth. In observing Londoners, he noted legal marriage, which underpinned social organization, predominated even at the lowest level of society and particularly among the young. ³³ In line with Booth's claim, the Brogden group mostly complied with legal requirements around marriage. In the colony they came under the regulations of the New Zealand Marriages Act first passed in 1847. Changes in 1854 meant that by the time Brogdens’ Navvies arrived, when the laborers’ wage averaged 7s per day, it cost a laborer a full day's pay for the official marriage documentation before paying the clergyman or registrar. These financial obstacles did not deter most Brogdenites from choosing to marry respectably.

Not only did the group mostly marry, but the widowed also tended to remarry, particularly when their spouse died young. Among the adults, thirty-four widowers and thirteen widows remarried in New Zealand. Again, this suggests an acceptance of marriage as important although for some a marriage-like relationship was an economic necessity. James Hodges was left with six children when his wife Lucy died in 1879. ³⁴ He married Harriet in 1883 and they added three to the household. ³⁵ Both men and women struggled to provide a home and childcare in the absence of their spouse, so the majority chose to marry again. The majority of the Brogdens’ Navvies married, including those arriving as single men and children, demonstrating an acceptance of the value of marriage.

The Difficulties of Marriage Breakdown

Despite the centrality of marriage, not all marriages thrived, leading to a considerable number of marriage breakdowns. One historian of late-Victorian England, Ginger Frost vividly summarized, 'Unhappy husbands and wives … divorced with their feet', as part of a strong debate during the last twenty years over the prevalence of Victorian-era marriage breakdown and cohabitation. ³⁶ Rachel Pimm-Smith and Rebecca Probert believe the incidence of marriage breakdown can be overemphasized by historians fixated on finding examples. ³⁷ They also observed that the poor were more prone to marital breakdown. ³⁸ Financial strains often featured in breakdowns, which Frost describes as pervasive in marriages of the working classes. ³⁹ In contrast to the English debate, the subject receives limited attention in New Zealand historiography. The emphasis on ongoing marriage traditions and the resulting families means failed relationships have largely escaped attention, especially for the settler era. Historians have considered changes in legislation that gave married women separate property rights and enabled women to run their own businesses, and their works have included valuable material on marriage. ⁴⁰ Other contributions include Jacky Lloyd who, in the late 1970s, recognized that marriage breakdowns, defined as including those ended by desertion, separation, and divorce, have been present throughout New Zealand's history. ⁴¹ Roderick Phillips’ well-regarded 1981 work on divorce remains the most significant published history on the subject. ⁴² Reflecting on the settler period, Phillips noted the increasing importance of marriage and the family unit. ⁴³

The value of marriage to working people is suggested by historians’ analysis of eighteenth-century English commoners’ practices used to overcome the legal obstacles to ending a marriage and starting a new relationship. Anne Summers's feminist history of Australia reported convict women desperate to marry resorted to having letters posted back from England informing of their husband's death so they could be registered as widows. ⁴⁴ E. P. Thompson's study into the ritual of marketplace wife sales used evidence of eighteen and nineteenth-century sales to examine the extent of the practice and reasons for its acceptance to signal the end of a marriage. Thompson called it a form of divorce reflecting a traditional popular culture that valued ritual and proper forms. ⁴⁵ He argued common culture, one that upheld social norms and defended marriage as part of their way of life, needed a ritual to indicate the end of a marriage. ⁴⁶ John Gillis studied the range of marriage forms and found that while legal marriage prevailed by the late Victorian era, less formal variants survived in the poorest areas. ⁴⁷ Even then, those couples lived in conventional families. ⁴⁸ At the turn of the twentieth century, Charles Booth found sexually active young couples did not usually live together before marriage, with cohabitation most common between older people. ⁴⁹ Furthermore, Joanne Klein suggests informal marriages were part of respectable working-class culture. ⁵⁰ This suggests that British working people were more likely to be exposed to different marriage behaviors, but most followed wider norms for family life.

New Zealand's laws often reflected those at ‘Home’, but the colony's values were different. An important recognition of this difference was the first legislation to provide protection following marital breakdown, the 1846 Ordinance for the support of destitute families and illegitimate children. In an inversion of British Poor Law practice which migrants wanted to leave behind, nuclear families were financially responsible for close family members. ⁵¹ Amendments made in 1877 to the Destitute Persons Act extended the measures, making it a misdemeanor for someone to evade an order under the Act by going to the Australian states, and widened the definition of relatives liable to support a destitute person. Changed provisions of the Destitute Persons Act 1894 held a husband financially responsible for children that his wife had borne before their marriage, providing widows with a potential obstacle to remarriage. Changes in the 1910 Destitute Persons Act redefined ‘near relatives’, offered maintenance orders for inadequate financial support, persistent cruelty, habitual drunkenness, and the domestic assault of a wife or children, even when the husband was willing to support his wife if she returned to him, but she had reasonable grounds not to do so. The terms of the Destitute Persons Acts, therefore, were designed to reduce any state or public responsibility for the penniless and the deserted by attempting to hold those nearest to the needy liable for their maintenance. ⁵² The major benefit for the poorest families was the provision allowing women to control their own income and protect it from a husband who might undermine rather than enhance the family's financial position. ⁵³

Most of the 275 Brogdenite couples who settled in New Zealand stayed married, but some ended with an informal separation. Marital breakdown had several contributing factors that can be identified in records about the Brogden group. Inability to provide financially, desertion of spouse or family, and domestic violence were all in evidence. Horatio Nelson Pine's persistent drinking caused his wife Diana to leave. His difficulties raising a houseful of children without a housekeeper meant the children, described as underfed and neglected, were given into Diana's custody. ⁵⁴ As an underemployed laborer, Horatio repeatedly failed to pay the court-ordered maintenance, resulting in short terms in jail. ⁵⁵ The separation became permanent as Horatio eventually moved away, first within the colony but then to Australia where he effectively vanished. ⁵⁶

In other cases, couples seem to have negotiated amicable splits. George and Olivia Beare only had one daughter and appear to have lived apart for many years, he worked as a rural laborer while she stayed in a big town supporting herself as a nurse. ⁵⁷ Such arrangements were usually made by older couples, past the economically difficult child-rearing years. Another example was a husband who lived away from his wife but acted as administrator of her estate. ⁵⁸

For the battered and bruised, the need to flee domestic violence could be a precipitating factor. Condemned when it came before the court, then, as now, most cases remained hidden behind closed doors. This was the only real ‘private’ marriage behavior routinely denounced, although violence was sometimes judged to be provoked. Florence Banks was assaulted by her husband. The judge said Samuel Banks's motivating jealousy was not as bad as a brutal nature and fined him instead of giving jail time. ⁵⁹ Charles Davis testified he had taken pity on abused wife Jessie Cheriton. ⁶⁰ While the court doubted his motives, friends, and neighbors did not condemn women leaving violent marriages, instead offering help and sympathy. ⁶¹ Some even tried to stop confrontations.

Friends and neighbors recognized the difficulties and individual marriage breakdowns did not attract any adverse comment at the local level. ⁶² Judges who regularly handled cases of marital conflict and breakdown offered pragmatic advice rather than moral judgments. The judge in the Pines’ case recommended reconciliation for financial reasons and chose to ignore their accusations that the other was cohabiting. ⁶³ They accepted marriages fell apart and offered practical solutions to avoid taxing community support. That they did not recommend that reuniting would be best for the children or family suggests that these concerns were a lower priority than ensuring parents met their familial financial obligations. In addition to this pragmatic approach, those cohabiting were ignored in official statistics. Quantifiable data on marital breakdown was not collected as stable family life remained a central ideal and cohabitation implied immorality. ⁶⁴ Further, government statistics show the category at the time of collection, so the previously divorced or widowed who remarried were counted as ‘married’, a class which probably also included those cohabiting. ⁶⁵ Alternatively, unconventional relationships could be hidden in the percentage which did not reveal their marital status. ⁶⁶

Families often received little official sympathy when deserted by the breadwinner they relied on. Laborers did not usually earn enough to support two households, but this did not prevent break-ups. The abandoned family seemed a particularly colonial problem; mobility was blamed when men avoided their financial obligations. ⁶⁷ Some noted the danger that deserted wives might be forced into prostitution. ⁶⁸ Deserted women could request a maintenance order, with men legally able to be pursued to pay what they owed. As in Diana Pine's case, a court order counted for little if the man was out of work, thus unable to pay. Those deserted wives who were prepared to present themselves, pleasingly penitent, to the middle-class guardians of charitable aid could get some financial support. ⁶⁹ The unapologetic wife who had thrown her husband out for drinking the weekly wage, the defiant drunk, the adulterous 'home-wrecker', and the criminally desperate were largely denied sympathy or help and were labeled undeserving. ⁷⁰

The Married Women's Property Act 1860 enabled a deserted wife to request a court order protecting money earned in the prolonged absence of her husband. While this had obvious benefits for the wife, the aim was to prevent deserted wives able to earn a living from becoming a financial burden on the state. ⁷¹ In 1870 protections were extended but still meant women left marriages with nothing. ⁷² Changes in 1884 negated the need for a protection order if deserted. However, women without property, savings, or income (hence most women in this situation) still had no legal protections. ⁷³ In 1876 Florence Banks applied for protection and maintenance orders against her husband Samuel. The judge decided on Florence's protection order, and the custody arrangements for their two children. ⁷⁴ The boy went with his father and the infant daughter remained with her mother. Protection orders such as Florence's are good evidence of marital breakdown, as wives utilized legal provisions to protect any income they had generated to provide for themselves. Others relied on less official means to protect themselves after a marriage breakdown. In a common move, legally dubious because they were still married, some spouses ran newspaper advertisements declaring they were not responsible for any debts their partner might incur after they separated. Samuel Banks's advertisement ran for a week, denying liability for Florence's future debts as they appeared in court. ⁷⁵

Eight Brogden husbands were charged with deserting their wives. They illustrate that family breakdown often had long-lasting consequences. Joseph Attiwell was one of the first charged with deserting his family. ⁷⁶ In 1875 he left them, resulting in his wife Elizabeth being charged with soliciting in a public street. ⁷⁷ This led to their home being called a brothel, the four children were sent to an Industrial School for their safety, where the youngest, their only son, died within weeks aged seven months. The Attiwell sisters were finally released in their late teens. Joseph Attiwell died in 1877 and Elizabeth settled down with another Brogden man, John Barnes. It was more unusual for women to desert their husbands and, even more so, for them to leave their children, however, it did happen among this group. ⁷⁸ That only eight prosecutions resulted from numerous marriage breakdowns suggests wives and families left behind continued to live in their communities. Some caused interest or outrage when they needed public or state support like the Attiwells, others slipped inconspicuously into new relationships to meet their needs.

Informal Alternatives and Inaccessible Divorce

Brogdens’ Navvies use of informal relationships appears to continue British working classes’ cultural practices. The Brogdens’ Navvies group turned up thirty examples of cohabiting relationships. It is likely the group included others that were not found, especially short-term relationships. A few older men like John Barnes cohabited and, while they themselves were usually unmarried, their partner had typically previously been married. Brogden married women also started new relationships, like Florence Banks who moved in with Joseph Taylor. She had a daughter in 1878 registered as Ettie Ellen Banks. ⁷⁹ The girl was later called Etty Helen Taylor as her mother remained living with Taylor as his wife. ⁸⁰ Taylor and Florence registered four children as their own, but never registered a marriage. ⁸¹ They remained together until Florence's 1926 death. ⁸² Long-term relationships with no marriage registered, like Elizabeth Attiwell and Florence Banks, accounted for most of those found.

While most Brogden migrants married, nevertheless, a few young couples cohabited in England before they married - in contrast to Booth's London findings. In 1871 George Beare was living with Olivia Morris, and their daughter Lavinia, born in 1865. ⁸³ The couple married on 3 October 1872 at Farnham and two days later they were on their way to New Zealand with George contracted to the Brogden firm. ⁸⁴ Peter Hutson and Mary Stapleton traveled as a 'married couple' in 1872, despite not having undertaken the formalities, suggesting immigration agents did not conduct a rigorous check on marriage status. Then aged 21 and 17, neither Peter nor Mary had been married before and it is probable they effectively eloped given Mary's age. They had several children before they married in 1882, respected and established residents of New Zealand's capital city. ⁸⁵ Peter was a prominent member of the Working Men's Club, a Justice of the Peace, and a member of the Brickmakers’ Association. ⁸⁶ Mary was active in public and social affairs, and at the time of her death in 1902, aged 47, held the offices of Treasurer to the Women's Social and Political League, and Trustee in a friendly society. ⁸⁷ Peter and Mary's less than conventional start to married life may have been well-hidden, hence no bar to rising socially to participate in the highest levels of a politically dominated social life. Cohabitations were evident even when navvies moved on. For example, Brogdenite Levi Clarkson returned to England where, in an informal marriage, he fathered twelve children. ⁸⁸ At least two former navvies went on to cohabit with ‘wives’ in Australian states, one in Queensland, and another in Tasmania, examples of stable marriage-like relationships following other family norms.

British patterns of cohabitation reflected class according to F. M. L. (Michael) Thompson, who alleged only 'the dregs of society’, the ‘incorrigibly disreputable', engaged in such practices. ⁸⁹ Cohabitation was motivated by indifference to social norms, he argues, rather than a principled rejection of marriage. ⁹⁰ Conversely, Frost suggests contemporaries blamed extra-legal marriages on the rejection of social principles, finding they were evidence of a disregard for marriage. ⁹¹ In New Zealand, the Hutsons from the Brogden group do not appear to fit either of these positions. Peter Hutson was the son and grandson of Sussex agricultural laborers. His brother became a minister. Mary Stapleton was the daughter of a village carpenter, yet this pair passed themselves off as a married couple for ten years before finalizing formalities. They were never disreputable as they rose in social prominence, nor indifferent to social norms as they posed as a married couple. They perhaps faced some less obvious barrier to marriage. Some known impediments included cost, religious adherence or views, and legal obstacles such as an existing marriage. ⁹² Thompson acknowledged the bigamous marriage and cohabitation served a practical purpose for the poor but claims only small numbers were involved. ⁹³

Regarding the prevalence of English cohabitation, Rebecca Probert argues accepted late-Victorian cohabitation rates lacked reliable evidence despite these problematic statistics being perpetuated in later literature. ⁹⁴ While Probert's investigation found up to 15 percent of those identifying as married had no parish marriage record, she suggests these were mostly due to ambiguities caused by common names, mis-spellings, lost records, and for those who moved locations. ⁹⁵ Instead, she blames high rates of cohabitation on other historians’ flawed methodology. ⁹⁶ Instead of couples without a marriage record being evidence of cohabitation, Probert asserts these couples were 'almost certainly' married. ⁹⁷ Couples could not simply present as married, she argues, without some proof of legal marriage being known or supplied. ⁹⁸ While this may have applied in her area of expertise in the settled English countryside, migration to another area, or another colony, could allow a couple to pass as married without raising suspicions as the Hutson's example demonstrates.

Although historians have researched bigamy and divorce, there is still relatively little known about cohabitation in colonial societies. Attitudes may have been different with more acceptance of variation by relabeling the practice as an eccentricity. This seems to apply to gold miner Bridget Goodwin, also known as ‘Little Biddy’ and ‘Biddy of the Buller’. A legend in her lifetime, Biddy initially shocked townspeople by living and working with two men, her ‘two mates’. ⁹⁹ After their deaths she retired into town where she welcomed visits from the Anglican parishioners, entertaining them with stories of her adventures. Biddy was respected for the ways she reflected middle-class values of hard work, hospitality, loyalty, and for her cleanliness, despite her dubious morality. ¹⁰⁰

Less conventional arrangements probably explain why twenty Brogden immigrant wives vanished from the records. If they remained in New Zealand, they lived with another man as his wife. Jessie, the wife of Henry Cheriton, is one who was likely 'married' to another. After an 1875 court appearance with husband Henry Cheriton and lover Charles Davis, Jessie seems to vanish. ¹⁰¹ Her death was never registered under her married or maiden name, nor did she marry again although she was known to be living in Dunedin in 1881. Some others had short-term relationships, leaving evidence of alleged fathers ordered by courts to pay maintenance for illegitimate children. ¹⁰² Taken together this suggests the actual numbers involved in informal marriages were higher than can be easily found.

Cohabitation usually involved at least one previously married person but did not only follow marriage breakups. Some widows and widowers also lived with long-term partners. While it is possible some married, and the marriage has not been found due to mis-indexing, mis-recording, or loss of record, examples found offered clues at their deaths that not all was as it appeared. Emma Paul, for example, arrived with her husband but was widowed in 1873. She became a respected and respectable part of a small community where she was a long-time resident with her 'husband' George Stewart. Her death notice as ‘Emma Paul, the beloved wife of George Stewart’ references her legally correct name. ¹⁰³ Proof of her solid place in society is seen in the large group who followed her funeral cortege. ¹⁰⁴ There was no legal obstacle to marriage for the widowed, so the relationships were an unexpected finding and the reasons for them are unclear but suggest a community level tolerance.

The bigamous marriage also appeared to be tolerated to an unexpected degree. In Victorian England bigamy was accepted, Frost reports, particularly among the working classes. ¹⁰⁵ Neighbors tolerated the illegal union as long as the bigamist conformed in other ways, which Frost identified as: having a good reason for leaving their first spouse, financial provision for participants in both relationships, and a lack of deceit about the bigamous nature of the marriage. ¹⁰⁶ Likewise in New Zealand, Raewyn Dalziel noted a similar attitude while investigating attitudes of courts and society to bigamy, with a preference for a stable relationship that appeared to fulfill norms. She suggests histories of many colonial families contain undiscovered ‘quiet bigamies’. ¹⁰⁷

Despite this, it was surprising to find that the Brogden group contained equal numbers of male and female bigamists. This contrasts with Dalziel's study uncovering New Zealand's ratio of one woman bigamist being charged for just over two men, which in itself is quite high compared with English studies. ¹⁰⁸ The difference perhaps reflects those previous studies drew on cases revealed to officials, whereas the close study of specific families has value in detecting ‘quiet bigamies’ which never went to court. Hence, the Brogden group's 50/50 figure is consistent with the theory of bigamy as a well-hidden crime. Henry and Jessie Cheriton had separated by 1875 at which time she was in a relationship with Charles Davis. ¹⁰⁹ Henry moved to another town and married in 1879 but his work took him away from home and in 1881 he was charged with and arrested for bigamy. ¹¹⁰ Apparently his ‘second wife’ doubted he would return. That he was acquitted is consistent with Dalziel's findings when she examined bigamy prosecutions. Her 2017 article identified seventy-one charges for bigamy between 1849 and 1900. ¹¹¹ In a population that had swelled to 815,862 by 1901, this low figure demonstrates how infrequently bigamy was prosecuted with historians agreeing that many bigamous marriages remained undetected. ¹¹² As frequently happened, Henry Cheriton had married despite knowing his first wife was still alive, admitting in court Jessie was living in Dunedin. After his acquittal, Henry returned to the stability of his marriage with his ‘second wife’, Florence. They moved to the city, where Henry worked as an umbrella maker and joined the working men's club. Their integration into the community saw neighbors rally around following a fire in 1897 that destroyed their two-story shop and house. Tolerance is evident as people rarely informed on those in bigamous relationships, police often chose to ignore bigamy, juries favored leniency and judges might dismiss on a technicality. As Dalziel concluded, bigamous marriages did not appear to harm social order or morality. ¹¹³ This concern for social order might be the reason women were less likely to be charged than men, with the stability of a relationship preferred over a legal intervention with the potential to deprive children of their mothers.

Tolerance could also have been affected by the persistent widespread belief held that marriage was either dissolved or invalidated by seven years apart. ¹¹⁴ Richard Seddon, New Zealand's Premier at the time, described it as an unwritten law that bigamy would not be prosecuted if the pair had been separated for seven years. ¹¹⁵ Therefore, some of the Brogden group probably believed their long-term separation left them free to remarry. Samuel Banks married the daughter of another Brogden family in 1887, thirty-nine years before his first wife Florence died but eleven years after they separated. Edward and Susan Hopgood are another example. She was his second wife and they arrived in New Zealand with a son from Edward's first marriage, with a further five children born in the colony. ¹¹⁶ In May 1885 Edward left Susan and the six children. ¹¹⁷ Edward was charged with deserting his family and a maintenance order was made and Susan was advised to apply for charitable aid. Birth registrations show Susan had another child in 1887 named Richard Newton Hopgood. ¹¹⁸ Then she married Richard Newton in 1890, only five years after she was abandoned. ¹¹⁹ This bigamous marriage cannot have been hidden from the community as they lived in a tiny town where Susan had returned to the hotel business that Edward had given up months before he left. ¹²⁰ She took possession of a store and opened it as a grocer. ¹²¹ She also ran the Post Office. ¹²² As a married woman acting alone Mrs Hopgood was denied an accommodation license for the hotel business. ¹²³ She then married Richard Newton and got her license. The Newtons had another son and daughter. Susan died amongst her family in Christchurch in 1908 with her death registered as Susan Hopgood. ¹²⁴ All children from both marriages were included in her will. ¹²⁵ First husband Edward Hopgood lived on the West Coast and appears to have died alone in 1930. ¹²⁶ Although she could not divorce, Susan opted to marry the man she, and her town, regarded as her husband.

A few couples left evidence that their informal marriage was perhaps an open secret. Susan Hopgood's enterprising spirit and need to provide for her children saw her undertake a range of activities from taking in washing when Edward first left, to moving into the liquor trade, providing accommodation in the hotel, and purchasing commercial property. Susan's relationship with Richard Newton which produced children and businesses did not inhibit her active social role. ¹²⁷ Likewise, Emma Paul and George Stewart's relationship in another small town suggests an open secret that was tolerated. While respected community members, these women both followed social conventions and subverted them. They could have taken advantage of the anonymity of mobility and shifted to another community, but they stayed, successfully challenging our views of middle-class social conventions.

Wider New Zealand society appears to have understood that lack of choice often drove people into extra-legal arrangements. Florence Banks knew Samuel was still alive so could not legally marry Joseph Taylor, however, they maintained a legitimate front. The practice saw the 'wife' take the 'husband's’ name and present themselves as a couple or family. By employing this practice, the cohabiting showed a willingness to conform to the norms of larger society even as they subverted them. ¹²⁸ They attempted to appear respectable. Elizabeth Attiwell spent most of 1878–79 in and out of jail as she battled a drinking problem. As a widow, she could have married again but she moved in with John Barnes and stayed out of court until her daughter Louisa had an illegitimate child in 1886. Louisa alleged John, who she described as her mother's husband, was the father. Elizabeth and John did eventually marry in 1896. While moral guardians would have labeled the cohabiting immoral, these stable relationships, which at face value appeared to be marriages and were regarded as such by the family, were tolerated and ignored.

At first divorce laws in England and the British colonies were based on the biblical principle that the only valid reason for divorce was adultery. New Zealand legislation recognized marriage breakdown with the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1867 and offered divorce on very limited grounds. The New Zealand Divorce Act 1898 expanded grounds and removed the double-standard where men could divorce their wives for her adultery, while wives had to prove the husband's adultery and another factor - bigamy, sodomy, incest, rape, cruelty, or desertion of five years. ¹²⁹ This liberalizing allowed New Zealand's divorce rate to rise from negligible to one per thousand existing marriages before the turn of the century. ¹³⁰ Roderick Phillips identified three causes increasing the prevalence of divorce: changes in the laws, an increasing social acceptance of divorce, and positive financial conditions. ¹³¹ His case study figures suggest a prevalence of manual workers in divorce petitions, but manual workers ranged from laborers to settlers so only small numbers were laborers and their ilk. ¹³² While from 1867 divorce cases were only heard in the Capital, requiring significant expenses for both parties; over time the legal grounds became more equitable allowing those without significant resources to legally end their marriages. ¹³³ A change in 1881 meant cases could be heard by one judge wherever a Supreme Court sat, making divorce slightly less expensive. ¹³⁴ Gail Savage noted in England more working men divorced their wives than vice-versa (70 percent to 30 percent), and women had a particularly difficult time getting their cases to court. ¹³⁵ Recently, Hayley Brown sought to explain the prevalence of working-class divorce cases as found in the Wellington courts. The high rate of working-class divorces contrasts strongly with the English experience, which Brown states reflected different class-based perceptions and suggests there was an English acceptance of ‘irregular’ unions. ¹³⁶ She argues that divorce demonstrated pragmatic acceptance of the importance of marriage. ¹³⁷ Of relevance is her conclusion that extra-marital births and adultery were evidence of a working-class culture that subverted middle-class moral rules and complicated the tropes of family stability in the early twentieth century. ¹³⁸ While initially only available to a few, divorce was the only way to pursue a new legally recognized couple relationship. ¹³⁹ By denying lawful divorce to most, those wanting to remarry were marginalized, being excluded from a principle social institution.

That only two Brogden men divorced their wives reflects the difficulty of divorce. The first was in 1901 for desertion by the wife; William Henry Angell was the other. He first married another navvy's daughter, Alice Frost. The two families, Frost and Angell, moved to New South Wales in the late 1870s. After the death of William and Alice's infant daughter, Alice reputedly married again, but no marriage was registered. Back in New Zealand, William's second marriage was a bigamous one, as in 1908 he married a widow with two children. ¹⁴⁰ William purchased a business and, a few years later, sold it and gave his wife Mary the £800 he received. Mary then left William and refused to return to live with him. ¹⁴¹ He divorced her in 1921 for desertion and married Jemima McCamish the following year. William managed to get a divorce for a bigamous marriage without disclosing the fact, suggesting his second wife was unaware of the continued existence of the first. As divorce became easier in the twentieth century, the children who arrived with navvy fathers were more likely to divorce than their parents’ cohort. Nine cases of divorce occurred among the 298 children settled in New Zealand, a mere three percent. Desertion was the primary cited cause, and the subsequent remarriage was speedy. They used the law to fulfill the need bigamy had not quite filled for their parents, the legal end to one relationship allowing the legal beginning of another. The small number of cases prevent any strong conclusions about divorce in New Zealand, except that it was rarely used in this group.

Discussion

It can be argued that migration to a distant place could encourage escape from marital conventions, yet people retained conventions they valued. This included the central role of family and marriage. A few of the Brogdens group indeed used migration to begin a cohabiting relationship, but others were prompted to formalize an existing arrangement. The group bought with them cultural alternatives that allowed the working classes to seek out happier relationships and did not tie them into failed ones. Mobility's role in marriage breakdown is ambiguous, with evidence suggesting it was sometimes the result and at others the cause. To understand their surprisingly conventional behavior in preferring to marry, it is evident that continuity can be observed with English marriage practices among the working classes. For example, Probert asserted, 'The lack of any clear and unambiguous name reflects the rarity of cohabitation in this period'. ¹⁴² Indeed, cohabiting, concubinage, de facto, reputed, and pretended were all terms used in the New Zealand press to describe a marriage-like relationship that, while not illegal, was regarded as immoral by the respectable. Frost, in challenging Probert's ideas, notes Probert's very narrow definition of cohabitation excluded those who never intended marriage as well as those who married illegally. ¹⁴³ Preferring to use informal marriage in a broader sense, this study has found that relationships were more in line with some of Frost's broader arguments. Couples preferred to marry but Frost argues, in England, those who cohabited faced legal and religious obstacles to marriage, a situation which might also apply in New Zealand. ¹⁴⁴ On the other hand, Probert's observation that 'one might ponder why couples would claim to be married if cohabitation was as common and as widely accepted as has been claimed' correlates frequency with acceptability. ¹⁴⁵ Could it not be that cohabitation occurred as needed but was hidden due to a lack of acceptability: that it fulfilled a need for those unable to legally marry? As Frost suggests Brogdenite working-class cohabiters 'saw themselves as married', as they acted as married people and referred to themselves as married. ¹⁴⁶ Further evidence of couples acting as if married was found in a Tasmanian study where two-thirds of births to unmarried couples were registered as if to a married couple, the mother using the father's surname. ¹⁴⁷ This suggests a wide-spread but well-hidden practice in the colonies hidden behind conventional behavior, irrespective of whether the same occurred in immigrants’ place of origin.

The New Zealand discourse about marriage and divorce reflected expectations of marriage with separate spheres of influence for men and women, and defined masculine and feminine roles, but the moral majority's ideals of marriage in a perfect world bore little resemblance to the colonial experience of laboring people. Laborers and their families lived near one another and unlike those with larger houses, there was no respite in a working-man's cottage or hut from continual interaction. Going out to work would provide some reprieve and following work around the district and beyond was a legitimate excuse for living apart. It also provided an opportunity for some men to escape wives and families and might lead to charges of desertion if maintained over time, without money being sent home. In the case of marriage, some behaviors were considered unacceptable. The men who did not provide were considered a double failure. They had failed their families and they had failed as men. ¹⁴⁸ Society labeled men unable to earn as either lacking character or the desire for work or both. ¹⁴⁹ Any failures to provide for their dependents was evidence they avoided their responsibilities. ¹⁵⁰ Horatio Nelson Pine's difficulties paying maintenance after he left the family saw Diana blame his drinking, while he blamed lack of work. Issues that precluded earning, like underemployment in seasonal and rural work, or injury or illness, were scarcely recognized. Yet other couples arranged separations without involving the court, complying with convention about respectability even as they moved out of the accepted family structure.

Broken families were seen as a potentially deplorable financial burden for society, and the shameful behaviors of failure to provide, desertion, domestic violence, and cohabitation were mostly regarded as the territory of poorer people. These attitudes seem to represent a class-based approach to marriage breakdown by attributing it to those on the bottom rungs of the social ladder. The abandoned colonial wife found herself in an exceedingly difficult position, left without money, and probably with children. Her choices were to struggle to provide for herself in a system that did not provide women with a living wage and to plead for grudgingly given charity or to risk social censure while cohabiting with an understanding man. He had to not only provide for this woman and her children but accept that any children from their own union were legally illegitimate. She could not remarry as her absent husband could return at any stage. New Zealand legislation, with its English origins, reflected the needs of the English propertied classes rather than those of colonial migrants, most of whom arrived with little. ¹⁵¹ When marriages ended the family unit was in financial danger, more so when far from extended family. In the case of a death, both widows and widowers found quick remarriage essential. Those marriages that ended without the death of a spouse, however, were in no less economic peril. Changes over time accommodated issues that were encountered, but not before marital failures forced people to choose between legality and morality when establishing new relationships.

This New Zealand example contrasts with the argument that working people expected little more than companionship from their marriages, as they continued to find ways to search for a happy home both within the law and without. ¹⁵² This research found seventeen cohabiting examples with another twenty navvy wives unaccounted for and likely in an informal marriage. Of five instances of bigamy, only one was prosecuted, with another three probable bigamous marriages in the group. Both cohabitation and bigamy generally followed marital breakdown or the death of a spouse, so were often undertaken in the absence of other acceptable choices. While Dalziel observed tolerance towards bigamy in New Zealand, this study suggests lenience also extended to cohabiting relationships. ¹⁵³ Social tolerance in this colonial society likely derived from the lack of alternatives when marriages broke down and the central roles couples played in their communities. Despite the relatively limited size of the group, the study also suggests a declining rate of informal marriage as the laws changed, with both cohabitation and bigamy reducing in the next generation as divorce allowed the informal options to be replaced. This suggests colonial society, composed mostly of British settlers old and new, was more accepting of the practical solutions found in an otherwise impossible situation than legal and social discourse would suggest. The smaller population enabled a greater degree of social homogeneity in colonial New Zealand, transcending questions of class, and even employment.

Once part of the local populace, members of the Brogden group appeared much like everyone else. There is little evidence that the negative connotations of the navvy label persisted, and they continued to resort to common cultural practices to overcome difficult situations, prompted by a desire to appear respectable and follow the conventions. Once part of the community, they continued to apply cultural practices that should have attracted negative attention but there is no evidence it did, nor that individuals were vilified for their relationships. Therefore, it seems friends and neighbors were more accepting than rhetoric would imply in tolerating different cultural practices that followed the spirit rather than the letter of the law. While about 3.5 percent of the adults in the group were found to have lived in informal arrangements, the prevalence of the practice diminished for their children. With the new capacity for divorce, they ended their marriages legally more frequently than their parents’ generation. Only 1.8 percent of those who were under the age of fourteen when they arrived could be found in an extra-legal marriage, suggesting that given the opportunity to divorce they preferred the legal option. The divorce rate increased appreciably, from 0.2 percent for the Brogden parents to 3 percent for the children. However, divorce and its stigma were public, while informal arrangements remained private. The children were also slightly less likely to marry bigamously, at 0.3 percent down from their parents’ 0.9 percent. However, they still separated from their spouses without divorcing or entering new relationships, suggesting being married had not become any easier.

The wealth of scholarship around marriage has not generated the same interest in New Zealand, particularly in the more difficult areas of marital breakdown and cohabitation. This type of contentious subject, Tanya Evans argues, could draw on family history material as a source when informal life events left few official markers. Projects using family-centered historical research are described as ‘pushing forward the boundaries of what can be revealed’. ¹⁵⁴ This study uses these boundary-pushing methods to get close to the subjects when information about marriage breakdowns and informal marriages cannot be found in the statistics of the period. What is required is an examination of individual lives, with evidence found in electoral rolls, postal directories, probate records, and newspaper accounts of court proceedings. Websites catering to family historians enable access to the wealth of material made available through arrangements with archives and libraries and family history societies - far larger than the digitized collections of universities, public libraries, and archives themselves. ¹⁵⁵ The sheer volume of digital sources is searchable and able to be assessed by a single person in ways hard copy primary sources cannot. However, the limitations of indexing quality are frequently noted by family historians who promote consulting the original record while historians often struggle with the websites’ search engine parameters. Using this family-history-centered method found that the group members were more like the typical assisted immigrant to New Zealand than would have been found otherwise, upsetting the notions they were a homogenous group of navvies or mostly rural laborers. Instead, it found they were from the working classes, unskilled and skilled, but, like others from that group, not all their marriages survived till death did them part.

Conclusion

This article's examination of marriage and informal marriage complicates the current understanding of the spread of British marriage traditions in colonial societies. A significant discovery was the surprisingly conventional embracing of marriage and respectability by those portrayed as on the margins of society. Alternative practices associated with marriage seem to be widespread among these working classes, transcending the more specific condemnation attached to groups identified as undesirable, such as navvies. Henry Cheriton married Jessie because if young people could, they generally did. Brogdenites arrived married or expecting to marry and recognized the value of marriage and family for themselves and their communities. However, this conventional picture is unsettled by examples of widows and widowers in later cohabiting partnerships. Unusually, a few young people of this group cohabited in England, and others moved into informal relationships after they left New Zealand. In addition, this study found numbers of women involved in bigamous marriages equaled men, including one bigamously married couple imported from England, which challenges the understanding of bigamy based on prosecuted cases.

A known limitation of this study were problems in locating members of the group, from missing and inadequate passenger lists to births and deaths that were either not registered or misrecorded. Thus, the data analyzed is not complete for the whole group, implying this research underrepresents informal marriage within the group rather than overrepresents it. The close study of family histories method could be applied to communities elsewhere in the world to uncover well-hidden skeletons in the family closet and reveal the extent of female bigamy.

One area this article did not explore was the recurring motif of the importance of women's financial independence, as evident in the business life of Susan Hopgood. Further research into the lives of deserted and separated wives has the potential to reveal more about the work undertaken by working women and mothers.

The Cheritons failed to live together amicably. Had they not brawled publicly they would likely have avoided the notice of the law. Even then, the magistrates did not pose a moral judgment on the married couple and the lover rather declined to enquire further. Henry skulked off; his marriage broken. He married again four years later and was subsequently prosecuted and acquitted as a bigamist. But marriages that fell outside the norms were not a phenomenon created in the colonies, they continued an established practice.