The introduction highlights the longevity of Ireland’s history of divorce and the minimal historical interest it has attracted to date. The historiography of divorce, all-Ireland analysis and three-century chronology are outlined to contextualise the study. Key concepts are highlighted such as the parliamentary system of divorce, the sexual double standard, the importance of subjectivity as well as the gendered grounds for divorce. Augmenting church interest in the area of marriage and its dissolution as well as the prerequisite suits of criminal conversation and separation required to divorce are similarly considered. Irish divorce is also placed within a UK and imperial framework as well as alongside other strategies deployed to break or dissolve a marital union. The class basis of parliamentary divorce, its rarity as well as Irish citizens’ ability to divorce in either Westminster or the Irish parliament until the passage of the Act of Union in 1800 are also assessed.

A case-study approach of two Irish cases in the mid-1850s drew popular attention to the vulnerability of women under the existing gendered law of divorce and the need for its reform. The 1856 divorce of John Talbot of Co. Roscommon and Mary Anne (néeMacCausland) of Co. Londonderry was highly publicised. The case also raised popular criticism of Talbot for conspiring to be rid of his wife, the ecclesiastical courts and parliamentary divorce. The case coincided with a lunacy panic regarding the incarceration of sane women in asylums; however, in the Talbot case, Mary Anne never regained her sanity after being detained and subjected to a physical and likely sexual attack to allow her spouse to divorce her on the grounds of adultery. This divorce attracted considerable legal attention and prompted calls for divorce to be removed from the parliamentary arena. The Westmeaths, even after decades of litigation, never secured a divorce. A re-reading of Emily, Marchioness of Westmeath, is presented here to restore her to the historical narrative as a divorce law reformer and challenge Stone’s earlier sexist portrayal of her as petty, vindictive and obsessed with women’s rights.

Although the sexual double standard endured in the divorce court, parliamentary divorce remained lengthier, costlier and more socially and gender-biased. This chapter examines the profile of Irish parliamentary divorce petitioners and legal critics of the system. Successive attempts to reform Irish divorce provision failed. The personal trials that the lack of legislative uniformity in the UK caused was underscored by the Yelverton case which invoked Scottish, Irish and English law and partially inspired a royal commission to consider extending the jurisdiction of the divorce court in 1861. The commission recommended the unification of divorce provision throughout the UK, but this was never implemented. A further royal commission considered the laws of marriage from 1865 and recommended that divorce laws should be unified throughout the UK, but like the earlier calls for Irish divorce reform, this was never enacted: Ireland remained legislatively stranded. The O’Shea divorce in 1891, citing Irish nationalist leader Parnell as co-respondent, also drew the association between morality and divorce ever tighter and the full force of moral Catholicism was unleashed for the first time.