Ruth 

There is no Woman of the Day post today but if there was, it would be Mrs R. I don’t know her name, when or where she was born, or much about her - indeed, her name is unlikely to even begin with R - but OTD in 1991, her ordeal secured a House of Lords ruling that finally laid to rest the common law concept that a woman’s body was the property of her husband. What we do know is that Mrs R married a bloke in August 1984 and bore a child in 1985 but after a short separation and relatively short period of reconciliation, she and her child moved out to live with the in-laws on 21 October 1989. About three weeks later, he broke into the house, put both of his hands around her neck, squeezed it, and tried to rape her. He was convicted of attempt rape and assault occasioning actual bodily harm on 30 July 1990 at Leicester Crown Court and sentenced to imprisonment but he appealed against conviction on these grounds: 1. A husband could not in law be guilty as a principal of the offence of raping his own wife; 2. R v Clarke stated that rape between married persons was impossible as stated by Wills J. (This was based on Lord Chief Justice Hale’s proposition in the 1600s - yes, the 1600s - that by marrying a man, a woman gives irrevocable consent to his right to take her body under any or all circumstances, regardless of her state of health or her consent). 3. Raping your own wife is not unlawful. The Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) dismissed his appeal on 14 March 1991 but gave him leave to appeal to the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, popularly known as the Law Lords and then the highest appellate court in this country (till that constitutional vandal, Tony Blair, replaced them with the Supreme Court). On 18 October 1991, Lord Justice-General, Lord Emslie, delivered the judgment in R v R [1991] UKHL on behalf of the five Law Lords. In a unanimous ruling, the appeal was dismissed. The judgment is a joy to read, not least because it expresses in dry lawyerly terms the learned justices’ astonishment that anyone in their right mind could possibly think that it was ever okay to force a woman against her will. It included these words: “[Hale’s proposition] is no longer acceptable. It can never have been other than a fiction, and fiction is a poor basis for the criminal law. The extent to which events have overtaken Hale's proposition is well illustrated by his last four words, “[irrevocable consent] which she cannot retract.” Mrs R was not only subjected to the ordeal of the original attack but the appeal process by her ex meant that she was put through the wringer for nearly two years. Whoever you are, wherever you are, Mrs R, your case was the death knell for coverture and freed us all. Thank you.