I Did Not Commit Adultery

This book chronicles the breakdown of the marriage of Robert and Eliza Campbell, a couple living in Whitby, Ontario. Their case precipitated a six-year battle in the Ontario courts and the Parliament of Canada in the 1870s.

In the Court of Common Pleas, Robert Campbell successfully sued the man he alleged had seduced his wife for criminal conversation, and Eliza Campbell successfully sued Robert’s brother James Campbell for defamation. Eliza Campbell failed, however, to get an order for alimony in the Court of Chancery. When this litigation was concluded, Robert Campbell petitioned Parliament for an Act of Divorce: the only way to get a divorce in Ontario before 1930. In 1876, he failed to persuade the Senate divorce committee that Eliza had committed adultery – the only ground for a divorce at that time – but Eliza succeeded in having an Act of Separation passed in her favour.

I Did Not Commit Adultery is a detailed study of how the law governed married women in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Along the way, Jim Phillips reveals the operations of the civil courts, the forensic skills of leading members of the Ontario legal profession, constitutional law, and parliamentary divorce, which has never before been examined in detail by Canadian historians.