Cads and the law

My previous post, on divorce, lying and the internet, prompted a couple of interesting exchanges on the Site Formerly Known as Twitter and prompted me to do a little more research and thinking. After the break, I set out below some reflections on cads, duels and dobbing.

In my researches, I came across a House of Lords debate on marriage and divorce that took place in 1956. 

At one point in the debate, one noble lord mentions evidence from 1912 that 75% of divorces under the old law were by consent, i.e. procured by dodgy means in the way I described in my previous post. He then goes on to say this:

"It must be within the experience of many noble Lords that there was a time—the idea is not so prevalent today—when it was regarded as the right thing, where the parties wanted a divorce, for the husband to provide the grounds. If he did, whether he was the guilty party or not, he acted like a gentleman. If he refused, he was a cad. Everybody knows that that was the case for many years, until additional grounds were provided, such as desertion for three years, and cruelty."

The lord who made that comment about cads was Lord (Lewis) Silkin. He was an interesting chap. His parents were immigrant Jews from what was Russia and is now Lithuania, who settled in the East End and worked hard. He became a solicitor and founded the law firm that is now Lewis Silkin LLP, which, the internet tells me, "won the 'Firm of the Year' category at The Lawyer Awards 2025 – the most prestigious category in the UK's most important legal awards", so it is still going strong. Silkin became a Labour MP and was Minister of Town and Country Planning in Attlee's goverment (and is therefore perhaps the equivalent of Satan in the YIMBYs' demonology?). He was elevated to the peerage on retiring from the House of Commons.

The reason I mention all of this is to say, first, that, although he was a peer, Silkin was not a posh chap of the kind whose family featured in Society in 1912: Silkin's father, so Wikipedia tells me, cleaned the loos in a synagogue (among other jobs). Second, I think it is relevant that he was legally qualified but also felt himself sufficiently a man of the world who could opine on the nature of a cad. I suppose he was speaking in a somewhat light-hearted vein, but even so.

(Interestingly, the bit I quoted followed an intervention from Lord Winster, another former member of Attlee's government, who asked if these cases mostly involved perjury. Silkin's answer was 'not necessarily'. I am not sure that he was right about that.)

Now, I think it is quite right that we recognise that people have obligations of honour that are not legally binding. You might recall this exchange in The Magnificent Seven:

Chris [Yul Brynner]: You forget one thing. We took a contract.
Vin [Steve McQueen]: It's sure not the kind any court would enforce.
Chris: That's just the kind you've got to keep.

Quite right too.

One thinks also of 'debts of honour', so called because gambling contracts were traditionally not enforceable in English courts. And one can imagine examples with a less aristocratic flavour: a family might want to provide for someone whom a dead relative has morally but not legally wronged, perhaps by disinheritance or sharp business practice. Property transactions in England often bring out the worst in people and there is a fair amount of caddish behaviour which is disreputable but not unlawful.

But these are examples of the supererogatory, of going beyond what one is legally obliged to do. The interest of the caddish husband involved in a divorce case is that he is a cad for not doing what he is legally obliged not to do. Which brings me to duelling.

Where honour demands a duel then the thing must be done properly: agreed time, place and weapons, fair fight, seconds, doctor on hand and so on. But when duelling is illegal - or the giving of the injury  by duelling would be assault, manslaughter or murder - then I suppose it may also incumbent on everyone involved to lie to the authorities. 

A certain degree of obtuse silence is allowed by law, and the traditional privilege against self-incrimination (now most commonly known in its incarnation as the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution) is an aspect of that. But it is surely foreseeable that the doctor will have to say that he just happened to be taking a stroll at dawn on a blasted heath when he happened to stumble across a man with a wound from a bladed implement, and it was surely fortunate that he happened to have brought his bandages with him, and so on and so forth. It seems to me that it is reasonable to think that lies of this kind seem to me less reprehensible than telling the whole truth would be. 

This gets us somewhat closer to the non-adulterous husband. It is a matter of honour to protect a woman from disgrace, just as it is a matter of honour to protect duellers from the bourgeois laws of assault, and lying might be thought justified in either case.

The closest example in everyday life that I can think of is the playground prohibition on 'dobbing'. Modern society has been very assiduous in demanding that children regard teachers as being on their side, people to whom they can confide everything and generally just larger and less fun friends. But surely some sense of honour still persists? The child with the hangdog expression who answers "dunno" rather than 'tell' or 'dob'?

But even if there remain in the playground some vestiges of the honour of duelling aristocrats, principled gunslingers and gentlemen loath to be regarded as cads, these are surely only the remnants of a code that is dying out. As I said in my earlier post, it is generally a Good Thing if the law is not something for otherwise respectable people to regard as an unwarranted imposition; but we should not forget that there are other - perhaps bigger and better - moral codes than that which the state imposes on people.