"Marie Lloyd and Her Husband- Extraordinary Scene in a Drury Lane Dressing Room"

The article “Marie Lloyd and her Husband: Extraordinary Scene in a Drury Lane Dressing 
Room” describes a case of domestic violence between a married couple and was published in the 
January 30, 1892 issue of the Illustrated Police News. The article reports on the repeated public abuse
Marie Lloyd faced by her husband Percy Courtenay, including having a drink thrown at her in a 
tavern days before her husband threatened to cut her throat with a sword in a Drury Lane dressing 
room at a ball they were attending in the Covent Garden Theatre. Lloyd ran out of the room in fear, 
and her husband proceeded to assault her by kicking her in the back and the leg. The article suggests 
that the couple had a disagreement before Courtenay assaulted his wife, but a witness maintains that 
she did not provoke him verbally or physically; she claims that the husband’s hat fell off as he went 
through the doorway, while Lloyd’s sister claims that Marie knocked his hat off his head, and that her sister was angry but not aggressively berating her husband. These conflicting claims are focused on 
in the article, and the article also mentions how despite her condition, Lloyd managed to go on with 
her performance at the theater that night.

This article appears in the Illustrated Police News merely a few months after Tess of the D’Urbervilles finished appearing in weekly installments in The Graphic. Marie Lloyd’s brief story here is reminiscent of Tess’s tragic tale, as they are both women who are subjected to violence at the hands of men; Lloyd, whose husband threatened her life and beat her, has her actions questioned in the article: “there appeared to have been some provocation, but it would not justify the defendant in acting as he had done,” which suggests that the article may be on Marie Lloyd’s side, this inclusion as well as the focus on the witnesses’ view of Lloyd’s actions leading up to her abuse indicate that somehow her injuries and her husband’s threats are understandable if this were the case. In addition, the author remarks that “it was regrettable that there was not a better understanding between young married people like them,” which reminds me of Tess’s situation in that violence can be minimized to a misunderstanding. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess’s own mother is critical of her daughter and sees Tess’s rape as a misunderstanding, as she says that, “You ought to have been more careful if you didn’t mean to get him to make you his wife!” Both Marie Lloyd and Tess are scrutinized for their own actions, while their abusers are somewhat excused for their violent behaviors. In addition, Marie Lloyd is a working woman, as she has been working to pay for her husband’s debts that he has racked up. Both Tess and Marie are forced to work, and are made more vulnerable both by their positions as women and by their class. Marie Lloyd’s ability to go on with her performance at the ball also reminds me of Tess’s resilience, and on a grander scale, the way women in this world are forced to be resilient to survive abuse. Marie Lloyd’s story parallels Tess in many ways, and demonstrates women’s strength and resilience at the hands of gender based violence in the 19th century that echoes how women were treated and forced to navigate the world both then and in our modern day context.