Ginger S Frost
Biographic Data
| ID | 1094638 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ginger S Frost |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ginger S |
| FAMILY NAME | Frost |
| SIGNATURE | FROST G S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Samford University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Go and Live Together Again and Try to be Happy”
Studies of mixed-race couples have largely centered on higher courts, yet most marital disputes involving poor couples went to the magistrates’ courts or petty sessions. This article uses a database of 107 cases (fifty-two separations for persistent cruelty and fifty-five cases of assault summonses between couples) to assess the role of gender, class, and race in working-class marriages. The study reveals a curious pattern. For the most part, gen…
Brotherhood of Barristers
A ‘grave miscarriage of justice’
This essay analyses disputed marriages/divorces involving Jewish immigrants to England between 1870 and 1940. English courts came to contradictory decisions in these cases due to the difference between religiously-based systems in Eastern Europe and Britain's secular, centralised approach. The result was split decisions. In civil courts, magistrates upheld religious marriages by awarding maintenance to wives, but the same evidence proved insuffic…
Sascha Auerbach. Armed with Sword and Scales
Journal Article Sascha Auerbach. Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860–1913. Get access Sascha Auerbach. Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860–1913. (Studies in Legal History.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xxii, 403. Cloth $99.00. Ginger Frost Ginger Frost Samford University Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author o…
Vindictiveness on Account of Colour’
This article uses 116 divorce or separation cases involving people of color between 1872 and 1940 to interrogate the role of the state in adjudicating racially mixed marriages in Britain. These examples demonstrate the rising population of imperial subjects within the U.K., but also that marital cases could reverse in-migration, due to embarrassment and expense for all parties. In addition, gender and class factors limited the impact of race in t…
Not always logical’
This essay explores the intersection of race, religion, and nationality in marriage by concentrating on unions between Britons and ‘Arabs’ (those from North Africa and the Middle East) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Focusing on this area, most of which was not in the British Empire, allows an analysis of the intersection between the empire and the larger world. Marriage was a nexus in the intertwined prejudices of race, empir…
Such a Poor Finish”
Historians usually analyze changing gender constructions in the criminal courts after World War I through cases involving men and women. Using a different analytical lens this article explores two well-publicized murder trials involving war veterans and illegitimate children, one of a soldier who murdered his wife’s daughter from an adulterous affair and one who killed his own son. Although notions of masculinity had changed, the police, courts, …
The kindness of strangers revisited
Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”
Le London Foundling Hospital (FH) est une des rares institutions de bienfaisance qui a focalisé son attention sur les enfants des fille-mères en leur offrant soin et éducation dans un total anonymat. La plupart des mères qui confiaient leur enfant au FH ne conservaient aucune place dans la vie de ceux-ci. Une minorité, cependant, s’est enquise de ses enfants, s’est proposée de les récupérer ou a demandé à être mise en relation avec eux. Leurs exp…
As if she was my own child’
This essay uses evidence from 217 violence cases between cohabiting couples to investigate the reaction of neighbors to irregular relationships. Ostracism was rare as long as the couples did not flaunt their status, for a number of reasons. First, working-class families lived in tenements and row housing that promoted cooperation for survival. Second, women preferred to live near their kin, and families were less disapproving, as they knew the re…
Claiming Justice
This article surveys 226 affiliation cases from South Wales between 1870 and 1900. Detailed study reveals both the reasons why most women did not try to get maintenance, but also why they had high levels of success when they did so. Once a woman got to the hearing, the interests of magistrates and the poor law guardians helped them ‘find fathers’ for their children. The guardians in particular assisted women in bringing cases by the 1890s. The fa…
Ben Griffin. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain
Journal Article Ben Griffin. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture, and the Struggle for Women's Rights. Get access Ben Griffin. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture, and the Struggle for Women's Rights. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 352. $99.00. Ginger Frost Ginger Frost Samford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic …
Under the Guardians’ Supervision
This article explores how Cambridge and Cardiff poor law unions “found” families for illegitimate children between 1870 and 1930, even when doing so meant coming into conflict with national regulations. Both unions pursued support from fathers, stepfathers, maternal kin, and others. They also recognized cohabiting relationships in outrelief, and they used creative fostering and adoption schemes involving wider kin. As time went by, guardians form…
Revolting to Humanity
This article analyses three areas that limited the effectiveness of the English Legitimacy Act of 1926. First, re-registration was public, expensive, and time-consuming. Second, the Treasury Office used the change in the law of intestacy to refuse more distant relatives' claims on estates. Third, the law separated legitimacy from nationality, thus denying citizenship to legitimated children born abroad of British fathers and foreign mothers. In s…
Women on Their Own
Victorian Childhoods
The experiences of children growing up in Britain during Victorian times are often misunderstood to be either idyllic or wretched. Yet, the reality was more wide-ranging than most imagine. Here, in colorful detail and with firsthand accounts, Frost paints a complete picture of Victorian childhood that illustrates both the difficulties and pleasures of growing up during this period. Differences of class, gender, region, and time varied the lives o…
She is but a Woman’
In 1902, Kitty Byron stabbed her cohabitee, Reginald Baker, on a public street. Though her murder was premeditated, and she was of a lower class than her married lover, Byron gained the sympathy of the press and public, primarily due to the gender failings of her partner. Based on the legal records of the Home Office and newspaper reports, this case study illustrates the limitations of the criminal justice system in dealing with women's violence,…
The Black Lamb of the Black Sheep
Illegitimate children in the respectable working class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced numerous obstacles in their childhoods, including violence, poverty, state intervention, and identity crises. Though most illegitimates were folded into the maternal family, their home lives were complicated by the hostile reaction of some relatives and neighbors to their births, and many such informal "adoptions" were unstable. Child…
A Shock to Marriage
Emily Hall married Edmund Haughton Jackson in 1887 in the town of Clitheroe, Lancashire, but the couple never cohabited. In fact, except for a few days immediately after the ceremony, Emily refused to live with her husband for four years, ignoring his many requests to do so and defying a court's judgment in his successful suit for restitution of conjugal rights in 1889. According to English law, her flouting of the order for restitution could hav…
Bigamy and Cohabitation in Victorian England
This article, based on 221 bigamy cases between 1830 and 1900, argues that many couples, particularly in the working class, entered bigamous unions throughout the nineteenth century. Most communities accepted these unions if they followed certain norms. The bigamist had to have a good reason to have left his or her spouse, had to have been honest with the second spouse, and had to be able to support multiple families. Within these parameters, nei…
Promises Broken
In the nineteenth century, a woman who could prove a man had broken his promise to marry her was legally entitled to compensation for damages. Bridging the gap between history and literature, Ginger S. Frost offers an in-depth examination of these breaches of promise and compares actual with fictional cases. Althought the most important factor in determining the outcome of such trials was gender, class was also vital in assessing the suitability …
Short notices
James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth‐Century Chesapeake (1994), xv + 461 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, $60.50). Marguerite W. Dupree, Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries, 1840–1880 (1995), xx + 405 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £48.00). David B. Copian, In the Time of Cannibals: The Word Music of South Africa's Basotho Migrants (1994), xxi + 300 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, …
I Shall Not Sit Down and Crie’
Love in the time of victoria
She is but a Woman’
In 1902, Kitty Byron stabbed her cohabitee, Reginald Baker, on a public street. Though her murder was premeditated, and she was of a lower class than her married lover, Byron gained the sympathy of the press and public, primarily due to the gender failings of her partner. Based on the legal records of the Home Office and newspaper reports, this case study illustrates the limitations of the criminal justice system in dealing with women's violence,…
Not always logical’
This essay explores the intersection of race, religion, and nationality in marriage by concentrating on unions between Britons and ‘Arabs’ (those from North Africa and the Middle East) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Focusing on this area, most of which was not in the British Empire, allows an analysis of the intersection between the empire and the larger world. Marriage was a nexus in the intertwined prejudices of race, empir…
Bigamy and Cohabitation in Victorian England
This article, based on 221 bigamy cases between 1830 and 1900, argues that many couples, particularly in the working class, entered bigamous unions throughout the nineteenth century. Most communities accepted these unions if they followed certain norms. The bigamist had to have a good reason to have left his or her spouse, had to have been honest with the second spouse, and had to be able to support multiple families. Within these parameters, nei…
The Black Lamb of the Black Sheep
Illegitimate children in the respectable working class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced numerous obstacles in their childhoods, including violence, poverty, state intervention, and identity crises. Though most illegitimates were folded into the maternal family, their home lives were complicated by the hostile reaction of some relatives and neighbors to their births, and many such informal "adoptions" were unstable. Child…
I Shall Not Sit Down and Crie’
Love in the time of victoria
Short notices
James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth‐Century Chesapeake (1994), xv + 461 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, $60.50). Marguerite W. Dupree, Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries, 1840–1880 (1995), xx + 405 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £48.00). David B. Copian, In the Time of Cannibals: The Word Music of South Africa's Basotho Migrants (1994), xxi + 300 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, …
Bigamy and Cohabitation in Victorian England
This article, based on 221 bigamy cases between 1830 and 1900, argues that many couples, particularly in the working class, entered bigamous unions throughout the nineteenth century. Most communities accepted these unions if they followed certain norms. The bigamist had to have a good reason to have left his or her spouse, had to have been honest with the second spouse, and had to be able to support multiple families. Within these parameters, nei…
Promises Broken
In the nineteenth century, a woman who could prove a man had broken his promise to marry her was legally entitled to compensation for damages. Bridging the gap between history and literature, Ginger S. Frost offers an in-depth examination of these breaches of promise and compares actual with fictional cases. Althought the most important factor in determining the outcome of such trials was gender, class was also vital in assessing the suitability …
A Shock to Marriage
Emily Hall married Edmund Haughton Jackson in 1887 in the town of Clitheroe, Lancashire, but the couple never cohabited. In fact, except for a few days immediately after the ceremony, Emily refused to live with her husband for four years, ignoring his many requests to do so and defying a court's judgment in his successful suit for restitution of conjugal rights in 1889. According to English law, her flouting of the order for restitution could hav…
The Black Lamb of the Black Sheep
Illegitimate children in the respectable working class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced numerous obstacles in their childhoods, including violence, poverty, state intervention, and identity crises. Though most illegitimates were folded into the maternal family, their home lives were complicated by the hostile reaction of some relatives and neighbors to their births, and many such informal "adoptions" were unstable. Child…
She is but a Woman’
In 1902, Kitty Byron stabbed her cohabitee, Reginald Baker, on a public street. Though her murder was premeditated, and she was of a lower class than her married lover, Byron gained the sympathy of the press and public, primarily due to the gender failings of her partner. Based on the legal records of the Home Office and newspaper reports, this case study illustrates the limitations of the criminal justice system in dealing with women's violence,…
Victorian Childhoods
The experiences of children growing up in Britain during Victorian times are often misunderstood to be either idyllic or wretched. Yet, the reality was more wide-ranging than most imagine. Here, in colorful detail and with firsthand accounts, Frost paints a complete picture of Victorian childhood that illustrates both the difficulties and pleasures of growing up during this period. Differences of class, gender, region, and time varied the lives o…
Women on Their Own
Revolting to Humanity
This article analyses three areas that limited the effectiveness of the English Legitimacy Act of 1926. First, re-registration was public, expensive, and time-consuming. Second, the Treasury Office used the change in the law of intestacy to refuse more distant relatives' claims on estates. Third, the law separated legitimacy from nationality, thus denying citizenship to legitimated children born abroad of British fathers and foreign mothers. In s…
Claiming Justice
This article surveys 226 affiliation cases from South Wales between 1870 and 1900. Detailed study reveals both the reasons why most women did not try to get maintenance, but also why they had high levels of success when they did so. Once a woman got to the hearing, the interests of magistrates and the poor law guardians helped them ‘find fathers’ for their children. The guardians in particular assisted women in bringing cases by the 1890s. The fa…
Ben Griffin. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain
Journal Article Ben Griffin. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture, and the Struggle for Women's Rights. Get access Ben Griffin. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture, and the Struggle for Women's Rights. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 352. $99.00. Ginger Frost Ginger Frost Samford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic …
Under the Guardians’ Supervision
This article explores how Cambridge and Cardiff poor law unions “found” families for illegitimate children between 1870 and 1930, even when doing so meant coming into conflict with national regulations. Both unions pursued support from fathers, stepfathers, maternal kin, and others. They also recognized cohabiting relationships in outrelief, and they used creative fostering and adoption schemes involving wider kin. As time went by, guardians form…
The kindness of strangers revisited
Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”
Le London Foundling Hospital (FH) est une des rares institutions de bienfaisance qui a focalisé son attention sur les enfants des fille-mères en leur offrant soin et éducation dans un total anonymat. La plupart des mères qui confiaient leur enfant au FH ne conservaient aucune place dans la vie de ceux-ci. Une minorité, cependant, s’est enquise de ses enfants, s’est proposée de les récupérer ou a demandé à être mise en relation avec eux. Leurs exp…
As if she was my own child’
This essay uses evidence from 217 violence cases between cohabiting couples to investigate the reaction of neighbors to irregular relationships. Ostracism was rare as long as the couples did not flaunt their status, for a number of reasons. First, working-class families lived in tenements and row housing that promoted cooperation for survival. Second, women preferred to live near their kin, and families were less disapproving, as they knew the re…
Such a Poor Finish”
Historians usually analyze changing gender constructions in the criminal courts after World War I through cases involving men and women. Using a different analytical lens this article explores two well-publicized murder trials involving war veterans and illegitimate children, one of a soldier who murdered his wife’s daughter from an adulterous affair and one who killed his own son. Although notions of masculinity had changed, the police, courts, …
Not always logical’
This essay explores the intersection of race, religion, and nationality in marriage by concentrating on unions between Britons and ‘Arabs’ (those from North Africa and the Middle East) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Focusing on this area, most of which was not in the British Empire, allows an analysis of the intersection between the empire and the larger world. Marriage was a nexus in the intertwined prejudices of race, empir…
Vindictiveness on Account of Colour’
This article uses 116 divorce or separation cases involving people of color between 1872 and 1940 to interrogate the role of the state in adjudicating racially mixed marriages in Britain. These examples demonstrate the rising population of imperial subjects within the U.K., but also that marital cases could reverse in-migration, due to embarrassment and expense for all parties. In addition, gender and class factors limited the impact of race in t…
Sascha Auerbach. Armed with Sword and Scales
Journal Article Sascha Auerbach. Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860–1913. Get access Sascha Auerbach. Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860–1913. (Studies in Legal History.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xxii, 403. Cloth $99.00. Ginger Frost Ginger Frost Samford University Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author o…
A ‘grave miscarriage of justice’
This essay analyses disputed marriages/divorces involving Jewish immigrants to England between 1870 and 1940. English courts came to contradictory decisions in these cases due to the difference between religiously-based systems in Eastern Europe and Britain's secular, centralised approach. The result was split decisions. In civil courts, magistrates upheld religious marriages by awarding maintenance to wives, but the same evidence proved insuffic…
Brotherhood of Barristers
Go and Live Together Again and Try to be Happy”
Studies of mixed-race couples have largely centered on higher courts, yet most marital disputes involving poor couples went to the magistrates’ courts or petty sessions. This article uses a database of 107 cases (fifty-two separations for persistent cruelty and fifty-five cases of assault summonses between couples) to assess the role of gender, class, and race in working-class marriages. The study reveals a curious pattern. For the most part, gen…
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (11 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · History (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Criminology (6 works)