A contract is a legally binding document that recognizes and governs the rights and duties of the parties to the agreement. The final part of my paper narrows my focus to the issue of maintenance, examining the social and legislative context within which breach of promise of marriage operated. What the church could do was to ‘admonish’ someone who broke his or her promise to marry. One interesting aspect of the fact that breach of promise was just like any other contract, was that in the same way that a merchant was not obliged to disclose all the faults and flaws in his goods, so the parties to an engagement did not owe one another any special duty to disclose all relevant facts. 13. He said that ‘in the sight of God I was as much his wife as if the ceremony had been repeated a dozen times over’. It may be defined as "that subdivision of material private law which researches, describes and regulates the origin, contents and dissolution of all legal relationships between: (i) husband and wife ; (ii) parents, guardians and children; and (iii) relatives related through blood and affinity. For two and a half years Esther heard nothing of Duggan. This paper will focus on single mothers and colonial masculinities – two relatively unexamined aspects of the breach of promise action–to reflect more broadly on how laws in a plural sense, produce or prohibit models of gender and regulate intimacy. The problem was exacerbated by the inability of both plaintiff and defendant to give evidence until the 1870s for fear of perjury. Malice meant premeditation, in Blackstone’s words it was ‘an express evil design’.33 The evil in falsely promising marriage in exchange for sex lay partly in Christian teaching that sex was sinful and partly in the bourgeois solution to this sin: channelling sex into marriage. The case thirdly held in that context, a somewhat uncertain description of lands which was capable of being rendered certain by extrinsic evidence was sufficient to enforce the covenant. In a place without poor laws or parishes and where maintenance was difficult to enforce – where men had an entire empire or continent to disappear into – breach of promise offered women a lump sum payment at the threat of bankruptcy prison. ‘Her brother intends calling on you to see what you propose doing’, she warned. [1] Alienation of affections was another similar tort against a third party who encouraged the adultery, or who was otherwise responsible for the breakdown of the marriage. They could not work in many of the professions; they could not vote or be called for jury service. The central legal issue in all cases turned on what behaviour constituted a promise to marry and whether the broken promise was justified by the woman’s immoral conduct. In spite of this, a vast majority of the women were successful. Although the defendant almost always lost, popular opinion regarded him with ambivalence – one that increased with divorce law reform, women’s greater public freedoms and a shift in courtship practices that allowed greater autonomy to couples. Frances’ aunt does not threaten legal action nor does she ask directly for money to raise the child. A ring is presented as an engagement gift by a partner to their prospective spouse when they propose marriage or directly after a marriage proposal is accepted. Smith and Snipes Hall Farm Ltd v River Douglas Catchment Board [1949] 2 KB 500 is an English land law and English contract law appeal decision. In more than a quarter of the cases that came before the courts the parties had been intimate. That was because until the law was changed in 1869, parties to a breach of promise action were forbidden from giving evidence in court. These problems also beset single mothers in other Australasian colonies.52 According to Swain, a sample of cases brought before the Magistrates Court in the 1850s showed that only 50 per cent were successful.

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