The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton

Westminster, London, 6 June 1836. It is a fine, fresh morning that will become hot as the day progresses. Crowds are gathering at The Royal Courts of Justice in Westminster Hall, just a fishwife's shout from the stinking, fetid Thames. On trial is Caroline Sheridan a beautiful, clever, opinionated young woman who has been accused by her husband, George Norton, of 'criminal conversation' (adultery) with the Prime Minister Melbourne. It is the 'the trial of the century, bowdlerised by Dickens less than a year later as 'Bardell v Pickwick' in The Pickwick Papers. The jury's 'not guilty' verdict is immediate, unanimous and sensational. Norton is a laughing-stock: angry and humiliated, as was his right under the then law, he cuts Caroline off, refuses to let her see their three sons and leaves her destitute. For the next thirty years Caroline campaigned for women and battled male-dominated Victorian society. The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for the rights of women everywhere.