In my study of deserted wives in early twentieth-century Glasgow, only a handful obtained a divorce. One was Elizabeth Harvie, the wife of a formerly prosperous house factor who had been brought down by drink and deserted her and their children repeatedly. 1/6 🗃️ - ThreadSky

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thecuckootree.com • 113 days ago

In my study of deserted wives in early twentieth-century Glasgow, only a handful obtained a divorce. One was Elizabeth Harvie, the wife of a formerly prosperous house factor who had been brought down by drink and deserted her and their children repeatedly. 1/6 🗃️

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thecuckootree.com•113 days ago

In part because of her divorce, Harvie was well-documented. In addition to her poor relief application, which described her husband as a 'moral and physical wreck as a result of his own debauchery', she gave testimony in her divorce proceedings stating that he would go on weeks-long 2/6

thecuckootree.com•113 days ago

drinking bouts in which he would leave his family and live 'with a woman of ill repute in different parts of the City Glasgow'. Harvie's oldest son left Scotland, one of the Home Children sent to Canada as farm labourers. Harvie followed a year later. She applied for the divorce from Canada, 3/6

thecuckootree.com•113 days ago

and when it was granted her husband, who was found in a model-lodging home in Glasgow by an officer of the parish, expressed surprise that he was not already divorced. Harvie remarried in Canada not long after. When he died, the cause of death given on her former husband's death record was 4/6

thecuckootree.com•113 days ago

'chronic alcoholism cirrhosis of the liver'. Harvie was what might be considered a deserted wife success story, perhaps because she was one of the few women on the parish rolls whose husbands were prosecuted for desertion in the third quarter of 1910 whose who had some financial resources. 5/6

thecuckootree.com•113 days ago

Elizabeth was from a middle-class family and a had a four-room Pollokshields flat, which she rented out to lodgers. Even though desertion was grounds for divorce in Scotland, the cost and travel requirements put it out for most deserted wives. Elizabeth Harvie was one of the lucky ones. 6/6

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