Caroline Sheridan Norton

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (née Sheridan; March 22, 1808 - June 15, 1877) was an English public reformer and author who worked actively in the early and mid-nineteenth centuries. Norton left his husband in 1836, after which he sued her close friend Lord Melbourne, then Prime Minister of the Whigs, for criminal conversation (ie adultery). The jury rejected the lawsuit, but she could not divorce, and she was denied access to her three sons. Norton’s intense campaign led to the adoption of the Baby Care Act of 1839, the Marital Relations Act of 1857, and the Married Women Property Act of 1870. Daniel McLeese, who chose her for the mural of justice in the House of Lords, chose her because she was seen by many as a famous victim of injustice. Caroline Norton was born in London to Thomas Sheridan and Caroline writer Henrietta Callander. Her father was an actor, soldier, and administrator of the colonies, as well as the son of the famous Irish playwright and Whig statesman Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his wife Elizabeth Ann Linley. Mother Caroline was a Scot, the daughter of a landowner, Colonel Sir James Callander of Craigfort and Lady Elizabeth McDonnell, sister of the Irish peer, 1st Marquise Antrim.