LHMP #548 Fielding 1746 The Female Husband

In 1746, a young woman named Mary Price discovered that her recently-wed husband was assigned female at birth. She considered herself to have been defrauded and brought the matter to the attention of the law. Her husband was tried and found guilty under the vagrancy laws. England had no laws that addressed cross-dressing or gender-crossing specifically, and the legal records indicate that the system did a certain amount of head-scratching to figure out what charges to bring—though they were clear that they planned to find something.

A few months after the conviction, an anonymous pamphlet was published purporting to provide the history of the accused. Analysis has demonstrated that the author was almost certainly novelist Henry Fielding (author of The History of Tom Jones among others). Analysis also demonstrates that the vast majority of the details in The Female Husband are entirely invented (contradicted by the legal record). (Baker 1959 discusses this evidence.)

The question of Hamilton’s gender identity (as understood from a modern perspective) is tricky, especially as we must discount much of what might otherwise appear to be psychological evidence presented by Fielding, as it is entirely of his invention. I will be using female pronouns for Hamilton but refer to her primarily by surname.

Fielding situates Hamilton’s life within a mythic context, providing a quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the title page that refers to a supernatural sex change. The text then opens with a brief meditation on sexual desire and its variants, framing normative desires as being dictated by “virtue and religion” while non-normative desires are the result of “excess and disorder.” The implication is that non-normative sexual desire (of which he notes “all ages and countries have afforded us too many instances”) is a result of excessive desire and a failure to apply cultural restraints to exercising it. This is relevant to constructing a landscape of how English culture understood same-sex (or trans) desires, as it contrasts with theories based on aberrant physiology, or theories positing inherent orientation. (Of course, the presence of this framing doesn’t mean this was a universal or uncontested view of sexual desire in the mid 18th century, only that it was a view expressed in popular literature.)

The biography proper begins with Hamilton’s birth and early family life, which conflicts with the known facts of her life from the trial records. Hamilton is described as having been brought up “in the strictest principles of virtue and religion” with no indication of straying until she was seduced by a neighbor woman, Mrs Johnson, who had “learnt and often practiced” sex between women within a Methodist community. Fielding’s pamphlet includes very clear anti-Methodist sentiments, suggesting that they practiced various types of sexual impropriety.

This part of the history frames Hamilton’s attachment to Johnson as initially non-sexual, but that the strength of her devotion made her susceptible to Johnson’s sexual advances. Their sexual activities are described—using the standard legal phrasing of the day—as “criminal conversation,” despite the fact that sex between women was not criminalized in England. Johnson, however, transferred her affection to a man (another fellow Methodist) and married him, to Hamilton’s great distress. (The pamphlet quotes an entirely invented “Dear John” letter supposedly sent from Johnson to Hamilton, exhorting her to repent and follow her example into marriage.)

Hamilton’s response to this was “to dress herself in mens cloaths, to embarque for Ireland, and commence Methodist teacher.” (Note that in Fielding’s fiction, the decision to live as a man happened after engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman. No direct connection between the two is made at the time, although one can be implied by Hamilton’s later relationships. The implied connection seems to be “a woman will leave a woman for a man, so a stable relationship with a woman can only be had as a man.” However nothing this specific is spelled out.)

Methodism and its discontents continues to be a motif as Hamilton shares a cabin on the ship to Dublin with another (male) Methodist preacher who “in the extasy of his enthusiasm” while praying stuck his hand under Hamilton’s shirt. It isn’t clear from the narrative whether he suspected Hamilton of being a woman, whether this was pure accident, or whether—believing Hamilton to be a man—this was intended as a male-male pass. In any event, after some commotion and further sexual advances (still unclear what sex he believes Hamilton to be), she pops him one in the nose after which he leaves her alone.

On arriving in Dublin, Hamilton has picked up a severe cold and lost her voice, postponing the start of her preaching, but not the start of her courtship of a widow staying in the same lodging house. Being unable to profess her love verbally, Hamilton “was obliged to make use of actions of endearment, such as squeezing, kissing, toying, etc.” followed shortly by a written declaration of love. The widow, alas, though generally desirous of another marriage, rejected Hamilton in rather harsh terms, soon after marrying another.

Disappointed in love(?) and with funds running low, Hamilton turned to pursuing another well-off widow who seemed much more receptive of the attentions of what she believed to be a youth. In this context, the narrator frames Hamilton as having quite mercenary motives, whereas with the previous widow she “had never any other design than of gaining the lady’s affection, and then discovering herself to her, hoping to have had the same success which Mrs Johnson had found with her.” That is, Hamilton had as an end goal a romance in which both partners knew the other to be a woman. (Though it never went far enough to test this.) But with the second widow, Hamilton is depicted as planning to carry the gender disguise through the marriage. “A device entered into her head, as strange and surprising, as it was wicked and vile; and this was actually to marry the old woman, and to deceive her, by means which decency forbids me even to mention.” Though Fielding is being deliberately—indeed, aggressively—coy, the context indicates he’s referring to consummating the marriage with an artificial penis.

The marriage was celebrated and the bride not only declared herself satisfied but boasted to her friends about her husband, despite them commenting on how her husband looked more like a woman than a man. But her curiosity was roused and one night she (we must assume) felt up her husband and discovered the anatomical lack, whereupon she flew into a rage and accused Hamilton of being a cheat and an imposter.

Hamilton, realizing that Dublin had grown too hot to remain, immediately took ship back to England where she began practicing quack medicine. [Note: this isn’t necessarily to say the practice was fraudulent, but only that it wasn’t “textbook” medicine but rather folk practice.] Hamilton soon became enamored of one of her patients who was being treated for “green sickness.” [Note: Although the term “green sickness” is now associated with a type of anemia, historically it was considered to be a disease of virgins that could best be treated by sexual activity.] Hamilton wooed the girl and they married. “The Doctor so well acted his part, that his bride had not the least suspicion of the legality of her marriage, or that she had not got a husband for life.”

Once again the marriage is initially happy until the bride once again discovers her husband’s anatomical lack. Hamilton tries to persuade her “she would have all the pleasures of marriage without the inconveniences” but she isn’t convinced. At this Hamilton makes haste to leave town even as the abandoned wife tells her parents all, who rouse the law against Hamilton.

Setting up in another town, Hamilton once more fell in love, this time with a girl named Mary Price, whom she met at a dance. Two purported love letters exchanged between the two are quoted, the one from Price written in an exaggeratedly illiterate style. They plan a swift marriage, despite interference from a jealous sister and an altercation at another dance in which Hamilton’s breast was briefly exposed during a fight. But married they were and continued happily for months, even as Hamilton’s reputation as a doctor grew. Unfortunately, someone who recognized Hamilton from the time of her previous marriage raised the alarm. Hearing of this, Mary Price’s mother quizzed her about her husband and noted inconsistencies in the story. Confronted by Mary, Hamilton considered admitting to the whole, but by this time Mary’s mother had summoned the law and Hamilton was arrested, with Mary protesting that the accusation was false and malicious.

In court, the true story came out, and a search turned up “something of too vile, wicked and scandalous a nature, which was found in the Doctor’s trunk, having been produced in evidence against her.” (Again, the implication behind Fielding’s coy language is that this is an artificial penis.) Hamilton was prosecuted under the vagrancy act “for having by false and deceitful practices endeavoured to impose on some of his Majesty’s subjects.” During the trial, Mary Price testified that she had no suspicion of her husband’s true sex and that as far as she knew her husband had “behaved to her as a husband ought to his wife.”

Hamilton was convicted and sentenced to four sessions of whipping in different towns as well as imprisonment. But rather than serving as an effective deterrent, Fielding claims that the evening after the first whipping, Hamilton “offered the gaoler money, to procure her a young girl to satisfy her most monstrous and unnatural desires.” But perhaps, he notes, the story will serve to deter others.

Fielding concludes with an assurance that, despite the shocking nature of his subject, he has written it up so carefully that “not a single word occurs through the whole, which might shock the most delicate ear, or give offence to the purest chastity.” This comment speaks to his avoidance of specific descriptions, using circumlocutions, euphemisms, and allusion for all sexual matters.

Before taking any of this narrative seriously, compare it to the verbatim court reports which are quoted in Baker 1959 and provide a much shorter and simpler story.