Where/how Victorian-era philanderers would meet their mistresses

[returnfrom]

Hello everyone

Comments

[laurose8]

The earlier posts are better, of course. But I believe it was considered credible that she'd be part of the staff of his parents' household, or a married sibling or friend. If she was the dusghter of, say, the family banker or solicitor she could threten more trouble.

[sageincave]

This is what I was thinking. It's more likely that he would go after a maid that was not in his "bachelor" household...say at his parents' home, or a relative or friend's country home.

In town, he might have an arrangement with an actress or ballet dancer.

[sageincave]

There's also the possibility that he might impregnate a nanny, nurse, or companion who is employed in an over-large (but under-populated) country house. Those women are closer to gentry status, and thus might have a real claim to marriage or financial compensation (as opposed to a servant who's "no better than she ought to be" - that's a wacky phrase, I've always thought....)

[nineveh_uk]

I agree that there needs to be something going on that wouldn't make it a socially acceptable course of action just to pay some maintenance for the child. Loads of men got women of lower social status pregnant, and by and large they didn't go around murdering them, because having the odd bastard kid hanging around wasn't social death of a man. So there needs to be some serious social penalty to him that makes paying off the woman not an option (no-one is going to sympathise with a maid who says "I don't want his money, he said he'd marry me"). He's seduced the daughter of a male friend, who is all-but-engaged to someone else and her breaking it off to marry him will be very embarrassing for him? A woman, or the daughter/sister of a person, to whom he owes a large amount of money and who could cause major financial damage by calling in that debt if he doesn't marry her?

[reynardo]

Depending on the size of his household, he may well have a couple of maids, scullery maids or other female household servants. They wouldn't be the *only* servant, but if there were 4-6 staff, then there would be his manservant, a housemaid, a cook (probably male), a gardener/groom, and possibly a lower housemaid or boots. Or he could have a daily maid who came in every morning to do the rooms, collect and send off the washing, sweep, clean the front step, etc

[marjun]

Does she have to be "desirable?" I am sort of seeing a plain-looking, somewhat frumpy young woman who works as a housecleaner for this young rake, who believes that his attentions are more meaningful than they are. Once she turns up pregnant, and speaks with him on the assumption that promises were made, he might feel that he has to kill her.

[orthent]

Creepily enough, the OP's scenario was reminding me of M. R. James' short story Martin's Close.

[penknife]

I agree with other commenters that your main choices are someone else's servant, seduced (or coerced) while visiting their house; a village girl met while out walking/visiting the village shops/etc. who's willing to meet him outdoors or in a handy barn; or a shopgirl in London who's willing to let him take her out to a nice dinner and give her presents in exchange for sexual favors. An out-and-out prostitute probably wouldn't be able to make a plausible claim that she knew the child was his.

But I also agree that you need to make sure he has enough of a motive to murder her, because paying her support for the child would be the most conventional thing to do. Murdering her suggests that there's some particular reason why he can't just pay the girl to keep her quiet and a reason why having this be known would be an enormous problem for him (his fiancee has Views, and would drop him, or his elderly aunt will write him out of her will, or whatever.)

[orthent]

What if he's living beyond his means and actually up to his eyeballs in debt? That might give him a motive to kill her instead of paying her off.

[licoricealsorts]

It wouldn't be hard for him to womanize with married women of his own class; he would meet them simply by socializing in the ordinary way. Married women had much more freedom than single women. He might, for example, "accidentally" bump into her at an art gallery or a public lecture. A sympathetic friend could do a great deal to help facilitate romantic rendezvous. And let's not forget what a great place church was for socializing. Any woman who wanted to see a man again would have no trouble dropping the necessary hints.

I got the impression the other commenters are assuming your philanderer is a bit of a cad, but if he's mostly hooking up with married women they may be as game for some no-strings adventures as he is.

[archangelbeth]

How do widows count in whether they'd be free enough to have a fling? (And if they're of the same social station, might they be willing to turn up if their contraceptives (sponges soaked in vinegar? Is that as period as I've been led to believe?) failed and they'd been widowed long enough that it was... obviously not their late husband's...)

[licoricealsorts]

Well, the merry widow wasn't a trope for nothing. I'm not an expert in Victorian sexual mores, so if you really want to delve deeply into this, try reading Anthony Trollope and Mrs Gaskell. The one thing I do know is that an independently wealthy widow could pretty much do whatever she liked - and to some extent the tables were turned, because if she had money there were bound to be plenty of impecunious young bucks maneuvering to marry her. A smart widow could keep a whole bunch of tomboys on a string without ever surrendering her independence. Of course, people will talk, so then it all depends really on how much she cares.