Analysis: The stories of sex and surveillance captured in church records reveal much about how communities attempted to monitor one another's behaviour
In 18th and 19th century Ulster, neighbours often kept a close eye on one another. In Presbyterian communities, women and men used their eyes, ears and tongues to watch, listen, and then report the misbehaviour of their neighbours to the church courts.
Community surveillance was central to Presbyterian discipline in Ulster. The church closely regulated members' intimate lives through a system of church courts. The local court was called the Kirk Session. Misbehaving members could be summoned for drunkenness, fighting, skipping church services or marrying bigamously. But it was sexual offences that sent most to the church courts.
This included sex between unmarried and about-to-be-married persons (known as fornication or pre-marital fornication), sex with someone who was not your spouse (adultery), and "scandalous carriage" – intimate acts that stopped short of full sexual intercourse, such as kissing or heavy petting. In my new book, Pious and Promiscuous. Life, love and family in Presbyterian Ulster, I reveal for the first time the personal stories of Presbyterians in 18th and 19th century Ulster, such as that of Margaret Cudbert, and many others, who appeared before the church courts charged with sexual misbehaviour.
In December 1704, Margaret Cudbert was reported to Carnmoney Kirk Session for "unseemly carriage" after she was seen lying in bed with a man named John Burns. The case came to the court's attention thanks to the spying efforts of their neighbours. John Henry first spotted the couple together and then fetched his friend Thomas Baxter to witness the scene. Thomas told the court that John said, "he would let him see a man and woman lie together" before taking him to Margaret’s house. Because Margaret and John were unmarried, their bed-sharing aroused suspicions that they had engaged in sexual activity. Despite protests from Margaret’s mother that nothing untoward had happened – she insisted that she had been in the room chaperoning the entire time – the Kirk Session ruled that Margaret was to stand publicly for her offence the next Sabbath.
Community surveillance was however not just limited to the home. Sometimes, neighbours caught couples in more unexpected locations.
In March 1726, an adulterous affair between David Weir and Isobel Morton was discovered when they were seen emerging from a ditch by Elizabeth Neilson and Michael Sweetman. Their attention was drawn, not least because Isobel had attempted to hide her identity by "put[t]ing her head behind David’s back". Elizabeth and Michael were sure that the guilty pair had been lying down on the ground together because they heard David asking Isobel to rub soil off his back. David was even in a state of undress. According to Michael, David had "his hands under the hunches of his coat as if he had been put[t]ing his buttons in his breeches".
The sounds of sexual activity also raised suspicions. In May 1766, rumours swirled around Belfast that the Reverend Hugh Smyth had been caught in the act with a married woman. The source of the rumour was Mrs Elizabeth McGaw, who managed an inn in the town. Elizabeth told the church court that a woman had come to her house and said that "she had a parcel of yarn to sell to a Gentleman". Although Elizabeth could not recall the woman’s name, she did remember that her husband was a weaver called "Rainy". When the man arrived, dressed in distinctive "Boots & Black Clothes", he and the woman went upstairs. Elizabeth was sure from the man’s clothing that he not a yarn merchant, but a minister.
Elizabeth told the court that she heard footsteps walking from the fireside to the bed in the upstairs room. But it was when she heard a noise that sounded like the "Jigging of a bed" that she went upstairs to investigate. Finding the door closed, Elizabeth peered through the keyhole and "saw them in Bed together in an unseemly way". Not content with merely watching through the keyhole, she then "Lifted [the] door" off the latch. She went in and out of the room twice more, before the couple got out of the bed and sat by the fireside. Before leaving, the man – whom Elizabeth later identified as Hugh Smyth, "Begged" her not to "expose him". As it turned out, however, the man was not Smyth but a preacher known locally as "Ray" who was known for dressing in "Black Cloaths & a Grey Wig".
Others took community policing to extreme lengths, even kicking down doors to catch romping couples in the act. This is exactly what John McLaughlin did in June 1838, when he suspected that two partygoers were up to no good in an upstairs room. John had been working at the party as a waiter and had asked Jane Gourley and her companion, James Lane, if they wanted a drink. They declined and John continued with his rounds. When he next returned to the room, the door would not open. After two failed attempts, John "put his shoulders to it and knocked it in".
Asked by the Kirk Session why he had taken such an extreme action, John explained that "several persons before that" had been "caught in criminal acts". His suspicions seem to have been well founded. When the door swung open, he was greeted by the sight of James standing "with the fall of his trousers down" and Jane "sitting" before him "on the bed". John promptly "pulled" James out of the room and marched him downstairs.
The stories of sex and surveillance that are captured in Presbyterian church records reveal much about how communities attempted to monitor one another's behaviour. While such surveillance might seem intrusive today, we’ve now found new ways to be nosey neighbours in the form of neighbourhood Facebook groups and Whatsapp community chats. Perhaps social media has replaced the Kirk Session as the court of public opinion.
Dr Leanne Calvert is Assistant Professor in the School of History at University of Limerick. Her new book Pious and Promiscuous. Life, love and family in Presbyterian Ulster will be published by the Royal Irish Academy on 15th October. Dr Calvert will be part of a panel discussion, 'Women, Struggle and Resilience', taking place on 6th November at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin as part of this year's Dublin Book Festival.
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