The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton

The extraordinary story of the first campaigner for women’s rights in the legal system

Caroline Norton, born in 1808, was a society beauty, poet and pamphleteer. Her good looks and wit attracted many male admirers, first her husband, the Honourable George Norton, and then the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.

After years of simmering jealousy, George Norton accused Caroline and the Prime Minister of a ‘criminal conversation’ (adultery) resulting in a trial referred to as ‘the scandal of the century’.

Cut off and bankrupted by George Norton, she went on to become one of the most important figures in changing the law for wives and mothers.