Paper Title
Household Goods and Household Violence in Late Medieval London: the Murder of Isabel Watson
Start Date
12-6-2011 9:30 AM
Subject Areas
Europe, medieval, family, marriage, violence
Abstract
The availability of material culture, such as furniture, clothing, or dishes, expanded greatly in the late middle ages, changing men’s and women’s interactions and becoming a site of contestation over how to create and display respectability, status, and gender. This process is vividly on display in a 1527 case of domestic violence. John Watson a London brewer, attacked his wife Isabella “with a dagger, which brought on premature labor, and she was delivered of a dead child, which had a great wound in the left side.” She fled to her sister’s house, where she languished for four months before dying. John first fled to Sanctuary to escape the law, but having secured powerful friends to protect him, left Sanctuary to see to his wife, and their household. On her death-bed, John gave Isabella permission to make a will, and she left the bulk of her estate to her sister and brother-in-law, Julian and Nicolas Spakemen. Watson then sued the Spakemens for trespass, when they collected their inheritance.
The documents of this unsavory case include witness testimonies and several household inventories. They provide two different ways of understanding household dynamics, one shaped by the dictates of the law, the other by the material goods husbands and wives interacted with on a daily basis. Taken together, this case shows the role of material culture played in defining and shaping household dynamics. They serve as a witness and a forum for husbands’ and wives’ interactions, exposing the process of enacting household gender roles.
Keywords
domestic violence, marriage, material culture, medieval
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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Household Goods and Household Violence in Late Medieval London: the Murder of Isabel Watson
The availability of material culture, such as furniture, clothing, or dishes, expanded greatly in the late middle ages, changing men’s and women’s interactions and becoming a site of contestation over how to create and display respectability, status, and gender. This process is vividly on display in a 1527 case of domestic violence. John Watson a London brewer, attacked his wife Isabella “with a dagger, which brought on premature labor, and she was delivered of a dead child, which had a great wound in the left side.” She fled to her sister’s house, where she languished for four months before dying. John first fled to Sanctuary to escape the law, but having secured powerful friends to protect him, left Sanctuary to see to his wife, and their household. On her death-bed, John gave Isabella permission to make a will, and she left the bulk of her estate to her sister and brother-in-law, Julian and Nicolas Spakemen. Watson then sued the Spakemens for trespass, when they collected their inheritance.
The documents of this unsavory case include witness testimonies and several household inventories. They provide two different ways of understanding household dynamics, one shaped by the dictates of the law, the other by the material goods husbands and wives interacted with on a daily basis. Taken together, this case shows the role of material culture played in defining and shaping household dynamics. They serve as a witness and a forum for husbands’ and wives’ interactions, exposing the process of enacting household gender roles.