This book chronicles the breakdown of the marriage of Robert and Eliza Campbell, a couple living in Whitby, Ontario. Their case precipitated a six-year battle in the Ontario courts and the Parliament of Canada in the 1870s.
In the Court of Common Pleas, Robert Campbell successfully sued the man he alleged had seduced his wife for criminal conversation, and Eliza Campbell successfully sued Robert’s brother James Campbell for defamation. Eliza Campbell failed, however, to get an order for alimony in the Court of Chancery. When this litigation was concluded, Robert Campbell petitioned Parliament for an Act of Divorce: the only way to get a divorce in Ontario before 1930. In 1876, he failed to persuade the Senate divorce committee that Eliza had committed adultery – the only ground for a divorce at that time – but Eliza succeeded in having an Act of Separation passed in her favour.
I Did Not Commit Adultery is a detailed study of how the law governed married women in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Along the way, Jim Phillips reveals the operations of the civil courts, the forensic skills of leading members of the Ontario legal profession, constitutional law, and parliamentary divorce, which has never before been examined in detail by Canadian historians.
Abbreviations and Short
Forms
Principal Members of the Byrne and Campbell
Families
Chapter 1
Introduction
Chapter 2 The Town of Whitby, the Campbell and Byrne Families,
and the Campbell Marriage to August
1873
Chapter 3 Robert Campbells Separation from Eliza, August
1873
Chapter 4 Eliza Campbells Ejection from the Family Home, September 1873
Chapter 5 The Campbells Go to Court 1: Robert Campbell v. George Gordon for
Criminal Conversation,
1873
Chapter 6 The Campbells Go to Court II: Eliza Campbell (Robert Campbell et
ux) v. James Campbell for Defamation,
1874
Chapter 7 The Campbells Go to Court III: Eliza Campbell v. Robert
Campbell for Alimony, 1874
-1875
Chapter 8 Robert Campbells Petition for Divorce,
1876
Chapter 9 The Senate Divorce Committee 1: The Case for Robert Campbell
Chapter 10 The Senate Divorce Committee 2: The Case for Eliza
Campbell
Chapter 11 The Senate Divorce Committee 3: Counsels Speeches and the
Committees
Report
Chapter 12 Eliza Campbells Separation Bill in Parliament,
1877
Chapter 13 An Interlude,
1878
Chapter 14 Eliza Campbells Separation Bill in Parliament, Again
1879
Chapter 15 The Principals after 1880 Winners and
Losers
Chapter 16
Conclusion
Appendices
Appendix 1: Eliza Campbells Petition to the Senate, 29 March
1876
Appendix 2: Eliza Campbells Separation Bill,
1877
Appendix 3: The Separation Act, 1879
Jim Phillips is a professor emeritus of law and history at the University of Toronto.
