Eleanor Gordon et al., "Working-Class Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce in Scotland, 1855–1939" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Mar 6, 2026

Katie Barclay, historian of family and emotional life, and Eleanor Gordon, professor emerita of Scottish social history, discuss working-class courtship, marriage, and divorce in Scotland, 1855–1939. They explore courtship practices, changing leisure and intimacy, regional illegitimacy patterns, irregular marriage and cohabitation, the effects of war and regulation, and how emotions showed up in everyday care.

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ANECDOTE

Highlanders Met Under The Highlandman's Umbrella

Migrant Highland communities kept meeting spots like 'the Highlandman's Umbrella' under Glasgow Central Station to gather and avoid rain.
Such named local places sustained kin networks and eased partner meetings after migration.

ANECDOTE

Love Was Shown By Doing The Dishes

Eleanor relayed a contemporary quip: 'love is a doing word' when complaining about an unemptied dishwasher.
The remark illustrated how working-class love often showed through practical domestic acts rather than verbal declarations.

INSIGHT

Illegitimacy Varied By Local Economy And Culture

Scotland's higher illegitimacy rates varied regionally and tied to local economy and household structures.
Aberdeen's servant systems and farm arrangements produced more illegitimate births, while islands like Shetland had strict moral norms and low rates.

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Working-Class Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce in Scotland, 1855–1939 (Oxford UP, 2025) by Professor Eleanor Gordon, Professor Katie Barclay, and Dr. Jeff Meeks is the first book-length study of the history of working-class courtship and marriage in Scotland, from the establishment of civil registration to the introduction in 1939 of legislation which abolished irregular marriage and introduced civil marriage. Adopting a 'life course' approach, the book explores the social, economic, and cultural contexts of romantic partnerships, from courtship through to marital or family dissolution.
Drawing from a wide range of sources that capture official accounts and discourses on the one hand, and the testimony and experience of working-class people on the other, the book offers a uniquely broad and textured view of courtship and marriage in this period. In so doing, it advances recent historiographical debates surrounding marriage in the Anglophone world, particularly the mutability of 'love', and whether the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries constituted a social and cultural 'turning point' for the working classes in terms of choice of marriage partner, the nature of the marital relationship, and the parent-child relationship. The book also engages with debates about extra-marital sexual activity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whether the family was more or less 'stable' than the contemporary family, and the different ways that marriages broke down before the advent of divorce reform. This has important implications for wider European and North American historiography, and raises timely questions about the primacy of the 'traditional family' in policy and public discourse.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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