20 Women From History Who Didn't Know They Were Marrying Monsters
Husbands Who Behaved Just Long Enough
You’d like to think you know who you’re marrying before agreeing to do so, but history’s cruelest husbands managed to appear respectable until the wedding was over. Back in the day, not every woman had a choice, and even if they did, the odds were so stacked against them that they could never have imagined what was coming. Some husbands concealed violence behind charm, wealth, or impressive careers, while others waited until marriage gave them access to money and legal control. Whatever the case, these 20 women had their lives upended.
1. Mary Eleanor Bowes
In 1777, Mary Eleanor Bowes was one of Britain’s richest heiresses when Andrew Robinson Stoney staged a duel, acted like a wounded defender of her honor, and rushed her into marriage. Once he had access to her fortune, Stoney forced her to revoke legal protections, subjected her to years of abuse, and arranged her abduction after she escaped in 1785. Bowes eventually won a divorce and recovered control of her property, and Stoney was thrown in jail.
2. Elizabeth Packard
When Elizabeth Packard married minister Theophilus Packard, she couldn’t have anticipated what disagreements over religion would do to her. As her beliefs grew more independent, he committed her to an asylum without a hearing in 1860. She was then abandoned there for three years, and even after her release, he locked her inside their home. Luckily, when it went to court, a jury took only seven minutes to declare Elizabeth sane.
3. Fanny Kemble
Fanny Kemble married Pierce Mease Butler in 1834, two years before he inherited several plantations and hundreds of enslaved people. Butler took Kemble to Georgia despite her antislavery views, shot down her attempts to improve conditions, kept custody of their daughters after the divorce, and later sold 436 people to cover his debts.
4. Tamar of Georgia
Queen Tamar objected when nobles pressed her to marry the Russian prince Yuri Bogolyubsky in 118. She had good reason, too—the envoys admitted that they knew nothing about his private life. Sure enough, accounts describe Yuri as frequently drunk and given to immoral behavior, and Tamar secured his banishment after roughly two and a half years. He later led a rebellion to try and unseat her, but Tamar defeated and expelled him again.
5. Caroline Norton
In 1827, Caroline Sheridan married George Norton when she was only 19, and they separated only a few years later after marital violence and conflict. George tried to destroy her reputation in 1836 by suing Prime Minister Lord Melbourne and accusing him of having an affair with her, but the case failed. The insanity actually helped inspire the Custody of Infants Act of 1839.
John Cochran / George Hayter on Wikimedia
6. Hedy Lamarr
Before Hollywood called her Hedy Lamarr, 19-year-old Hedwig Kiesler married wealthy Austrian munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl. Mandl tried his best not only to restrict her acting, but he also alarmed his Jewish wife with sympathies that leaned toward the 1930s regime. She thankfully escaped to Paris and rebuilt herself.
7. Eudoxia Lopukhina
An arranged 1689 marriage to the 17-year-old Peter I? Yeah, that didn’t give Eudoxia Lopukhina much opportunity to discover what she was in for. After abandoning her, Peter sent her to a convent because she refused a divorce; 20 years later, he compelled an adultery confession from her and prosecuted their son, who died after torture.
8. Flora Tristan
Financial pressure led poor Flora Tristan to marry André Chazal in 1821, and French law gave her no real way to end the marriage once she finally left him. Chazal stalked her. He fought for control of their children. And then he shot her in a Paris street in 1838, leaving a bullet lodged in her chest, where it remained for the rest of her life.
9. Margaret Keane
After marrying Margaret Keane, Walter Keane started presenting her distinctive paintings as his own. To make it worse, he somehow managed to build a lucrative identity around the lies. If that wasn’t enough, he kept Margaret working in isolation and threatened to kill her if she ever came forward. Well, she did, taking him to court and completing a painting in just 53 minutes—Walter complained of a sore shoulder and refused to paint at all.
10. Ingeborg of Denmark
It only took the morning after marrying Philip II of France for Ingeborg of Denmark to learn that he wanted her gone. Philip immediately sought an annulment, married Agnes of Merania while Ingeborg was still alive, and kept his Ingeborg confined for 20 years. She continued appealing to popes until Philip had to restore her publicly in 1213, and she then outlived him by more than a decade.
Original uploaded by Michaelsanders (Transfered by Anne-Sophie Ofrim) on Wikimedia
11. Rosina Bulwer-Lytton
Rosina Doyle Wheeler married rising novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1827, whose polished image conveniently hid a violent temper and nonstop affairs. When they separated, he kept their children, and after she denounced him during an election campaign in 1858, he had her confined in an asylum. She was there for about three weeks before public outrage freed her.
John Jewell Penstone / After Alfred Edward Chalon on Wikimedia
12. Tina Turner
We all knew the names Ike and Tina Turner Revue, but no one could really see the marriage behind it. Ike controlled the act and subjected Tina to years of verbal and physical abuse, repeatedly beating her and maintaining tight control over her career until she fled during a tour and filed for divorce in 1976. Tina then turned Private Dancer into a multiplatinum comeback.
Rob Mieremet / Adam Cuerden on Wikimedia
13. Blanche of Bourbon
In 1353, Blanche of Bourbon arrived in Castile for a dynastic marriage, and Peter I abandoned her within days of the wedding. Why? So he could pick up where he left off with María de Padilla. He then accused Blanche of infidelity and confined her in a succession of castles. She died under imprisonment at 22.
Louis-Georges Paradis on Wikimedia
14. Nina Simone
Nina Simone married former police detective Andrew Stroud in 1961, quickly placing him in charge of managing her career. Well, Stroud did more than that. He controlled her schedule, pushed her through relentless work, and physically abused her. The marriage finally ended in 1970.
Kroon, Ron for Anefo on Wikimedia
15. Louise of Belgium
Princess Louise of Belgium was only 16 when she married Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1875. It was a match arranged for political reasons, and after it collapsed, Philipp had her declared mentally ill and placed in an institution. Meanwhile, her lover Géza Mattachich was imprisoned on forgery charges. Louise managed to escape with Mattachich’s help in 1904, prove that she was sane, and finally divorce Philipp in 1906.
16. Ronnie Spector
Ronnie Bennett fell in love with the producer behind the Ronettes, working with Phil Spector in 1963 and marrying him in 1968. The sad thing is, he expected total authority over her music, confining her to their mansion. He took away her shoes to prevent an escape and often threatened to kill her. She finally fled barefoot, and Phil later died in prison after being convicted of Lana Clarkson’s murder.
General Artists Corporation-GAC (management)-photographer-James Kriegsmann, New York. on Wikimedia
17. Dorothy Stratten
17-year-old Dorothy Stratten met Paul Snider in 1977. At the time, he called himself a promoter, hiding the fact that he had actually worked as a john. He pushed Stratten into adult modeling, controlled her career and appearance, and went so far as to hire a private detective when she tried to leave. She prepared for divorce in 1980, but she never got the chance—Snider assaulted her and took her life before claiming his own.
18. Colette MacDonald
Colette MacDonald was pregnant with her third child and living at Fort Bragg with her husband, Army doctor Jeffrey MacDonald. One day in 1970, he reported that she and their two daughters had been killed. He initially blamed intruders, despite evidence that cut holes through the ruse, and a federal jury convicted MacDonald of taking all three lives. He was given two life sentences.
19. Carol Stuart
Carol Stuart was eight months pregnant when she and her husband Charles left a childbirth class in Boston, and she was shot. Charles immediately blamed a Black stranger, a lie that sent police on a goose chase before Charles’s brother admitted helping orchestrate the whole thing. After his lie fell apart (and Carol and their premature son both died), he took his life before he could be tried.
20. Paula Rader
For more than 30 years, Paula Rader lived with Dennis Rader—all without knowing he was the BTK serial killer. He took 10 lives between 1974 and 1991, kept trophies and explicit materials around the home, and once dismissed a disturbing poem she found. Despite it all, authorities believed Paula never knew, and she divorced him shortly after his guilty plea in 2005.
