Project compiling divorce database secures funding
A historian has received funding for a new project researching divorce in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Dr Jennifer Aston (pictured below), an associate professor in history at Northumbria University (northumbria.ac.uk), has been awarded over £200,000 by the Economic and Social Research Council to explore the history of divorce between 1858 and 1923.
In 1857 the Matrimonial Causes Act was passed, making it possible for the first time for couples to divorce without the passing of a private Act of Parliament. However, the Act allowed men to obtain a divorce if their wife had committed adultery, whereas wives had to prove that their husbands had committed cruelty, desertion, incest or bigamy as
