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Special Damage: The Slander of Women and the Gendered History of Defamation Law

Special Damage: The Slander of Women and the Gendered History of Defamation Law

Author: Jessica Lake
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9781503635258

Published In: November 2025
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Paperback Edition ISBN: 9781503644694

HKD 1,210.30

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Description
Contents

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In 1788, Mary Smith was ruined and banished from "civilised" society when her neighbor accused her of carrying a bastard child. To silence the ruinous rumors and vindicate her name, Smith sued him for defamation. But in court, she faced the onerous burden, entrenched within English law of sexual slander, of proving "special damage." Smith should have lost her case, but her action set off a remarkable reform movement.

In Special Damage, Jessica Lake offers a comparative legal history of gendered hate speech, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment across 19th-century America, Australia, and England. Drawing upon original archival material, she tracks the creation of the Slander of Women reforms that made it easier for women to sue when called "whores." Lake reveals, for the first time, the cases brought by women that spurred and benefitted from these reforms. In doing so, she details how debates about women, speech, and reputation circulated through transnational common law networks, connecting countries, colonies, and continents.

The Slander of Women movement furthered legal protections for women, but also created links between ideas of whiteness, femininity, chastity, and civilization. Special Damage tells a compelling story that questions the costs and compromises of legal progress in a patriarchal and unequal "civilised" New World.

Introduction

1.The Slander of Subjects and Citizens: New Jersey

2.Savage Speech Against Civilized Females: New South Wales

3.Unsullied Purity and the First Slander of Women Act: North Carolina

4.Free White Females and Social Intercourse with Blacks: Georgia

5."Deprived of Her Natural Guardian": South Australia

6.Stained Whiteness and the Cult of True Womanhood: New York

7."There Is a Total Disregard for the Rights of Women": Victoria

8.Barbarous Common Law and Double Standards of Morality: England

Conclusion