Absent Husbands and Scandalous Plots: Presumption of Death and Its Bigamous Consequences

Abstract

This article discusses the complicated legal issue of declaring dead a person who is absent or missing. In England, a decree of presumption of death allowed for the dissolution of marriage following the continual absence of a spouse for a period of seven years. Marriage, property, and inheritance laws were additionally affected by the absent; in essence, modern common law was troubled by the untraceable body. Following the examination of this complicated case history, including scandalous cases of bigamous marriages and their newspaper coverage, the article uses sensation writer Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) as its case study. The larger aim is to demonstrate how Victorian novelists manipulated presumption of death laws to demonstrate their arbitrary and sensational foundation.