Irish Divorce

Diane Urquhart is Professor of Gender History at Queen's University Belfast. She has written widely on Irish women's history and gender and is the author of The Ladies of Londonderry: Women and Political Patronage, 1800–1959 (2007) as well as Women in Ulster Politics, 1890–1940: A History Not Yet Told (2000), which was selected as an Irish Times Book of the Year. She is the editor of The Papers of the Ulster Women's Unionist Council and Executive Committee, 1911–40 (2001), co-editor of Irish Women at War: The Twentieth Century (2010) and co-author of The Irish Abortion Journey, 1922–2018 (2019) with Lindsey Earner-Byrne.

• Introduction. The 'anatomy of a divorce'; 1. Divorce in two legislatures: Irish divorce, 1701–1857; 2. The failings of the law: the cases of Talbot and Westmeath; 3. A non-inclusive reform: Ireland and the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857; 4. Divorce in the post-reform era of 1857–1922: 'Like diamonds, gambling, and picture-fancying, a luxury of the rich'?; 5. The widening definition of marital cruelty; 6. Divorce in court, 1857–1922; 7. 'An exotic in very ungenial soil': divorce in the Northern Ireland parliament, 1921–1939; 8. With as 'little provocative as possible': the Northern Ireland move to court; 9. An 'unhappy affair': divorce in independent Ireland, 1922–1950; 10. Marriage law 'in this country is an absolute shambles': the reform agenda; 11. A 'curiosity [and]…an oddity': referenda in 1986 and 1995; 12. The 'last stretch of a long road': the Family (Divorce) Law Act of 1996; Conclusion.

'Covering the past four hundred years, this is a major contribution to legal, social and gender history. Urquhart's work is highly revealing about the double-standards towards sexual behaviour, Irish exceptionalism, Catholic and Protestant attitudes towards moral questions, and absence of legal uniformity under the Union.' Mary E. Daly, University College Dublin