Denise Bates Breach of Promise to Marry

Annotation

A look back through the history of women who were about to be married only to be left at the altarand left with no choice but to take their revenge. A wedding day is supposed to be the happiest, most special and blessed event in a bride's life. And most of the time, it is. But sometimes, it is not. In this fun, fascinating look at betrothals that went bust before anyone even said ';I do,' the authors have collected the true stories of what happened when the groom suddenly decided ';I don't.' From the 1780s right up to the 1970s, jilted women (and the occasional crushed suitor) employed a range of tactics to bring false lovers to book. Here is a full wedding party of cases in which women found very different kinds of happy endings, such as Mary Elizabeth Smith who forged evidence of a courtship to entrap an Earl, Catherine Kempsall who shot the man who denied their engagement, Gladys Knowles who was awarded a record GBP10,000 in damages by a jury in 1890, and Daisy Mons who discreetly negotiated a GBP50,000 settlement from a nobleman. Based on original research, this social history of breach of promise shows that when men behaved badly, hell had no fury like a woman scorned.