A Shattered Idol: The Lord Chief Justice and his Troublesome Women

Product Description

A Shattered Idol

“One of the most despicable scandals ever enacted in an English household.”

After the death of his first wife, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge’s unmarried daughter Mildred was expected to serve as housekeeper, hostess and companion to her father, one of the best known figures in Victorian England. But Mildred wanted to marry Charles Warren Adams, the irascible secretary of the Victoria Street Society for which Mildred worked. After disputed accounts of an incident “in a darkened room,” Lord Coleridge forbade the two to meet. And so began a scandal of the rich peer’s daughter and the fortune-hunting journalist that intrigued London society.

Worse was to follow - the threat of a breach-of-promise action as Lord Coleridge tried to end his attachment to a much younger divorcée with whom he had had an affair on a liner returning from America, a libel suit that revealed every squalid detail of his tyranny over his daughter, and public humiliation as he was questioned in his own court by his would-be son-in-law.

Tom Hughes has written the first full-length account of a scandal that enthralled Britain for more than a decade. This is a thrilling and wonderfully told story of “a family which has gone to ruin itself.”

• A story of family intrigue, libel suits and breach of promise
• A scandal that was headline news in Britain, Australia and America.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A SHATTERED IDOL by Tom Hughes
Publication date: 8 May 2025

Every publisher expects to get calls from literary agents - how would we exist if we didn’t? - but even so I was surporised to receive an email from Gill Coleridge about a scandal in the Coleridge family in the Victorian era. Would I read the manuscript? I did so and was immediately enthralled.

Why did I want to publish it? Primarily because it’s an extraordinarily gripping story told quite brilliantly by the author Tom Hughes, an American with a passion for Victorian England. The hero, or villain, of the piece is Lord Coleridge, the Lord Chief Justice, the most powerful lawyer in the country in the 1880s. His domestic difficulties led to his public humiliation. His fall was indeed a dreadful scandal widely reported in the press and not only in England, but as far away as Australia and America.

I’m not going to give away what happened (open the book and you’ll find it hard to drag yourself away). What surprised me was that the Coleridge family - Gill and her cousin, the judge Sir Paul Coleridge - knew nothing about the scandal until Tom Hughes approached them. They could easily have declined to help the author. In fact, the opposite happened. They were very determined that the story should be told.

Does the idea of a father preventing his daughter (in her mid-thirties) from marrying the man of her choice resonate today when such a restraint is impossible to impose? For me, this is the distinguishing characteristic of the book - how Tom Hughes has handled his story. He takes it seriously - not least because the pain suffered by the protagonists was genuine. But there is irony ever-present in his writing, as if he is asking us, is this really possible? Could a distinguished lawyer have acted so foolishly?

The answer, of course, is that people have acted foolishly since the world began and will always do so. Not many people do so to the extent that Lord Coleridge did, and that is the fascination of this book

Reviews

Tom Hughes has written an enthralling and fascinating narrative of a family scandal that both shocked and delighted the society of late Victorian England.  His account of the tyrannical behaviour of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge towards his daughter, Mildred, forbidding her any contact with the man she wanted to marry, while at the same time conducting affairs of his own, is spell-binding.  When eventually Mildred’s lover manages to bring her father to court the account of the often outrageous legal hearings, and the behaviour of Coleridge himself, humiliatingly on trial in his own courtroom, are described with wit, clarity and an outstanding perception. Selina Hastings

A scandal about what?  A father’s control over his adult daughter’s life. The recently widowed Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge, the most powerful lawyer in the country, refused to let his 37-year-old daughter marry an under-employed journalist.

What happened? Lord Coleridge was publicly humiliated when questioned in his own court by his prospective son-in-law (who couldn’t afford a barrister).

Where’s the drama? There’s an incident in a darkened room, a threat of breach of promise case, a seduction on an Atlantic liner, a libel suit that revealed every squalid detail of The Lord Chief Justice’s tyranny over his daughter and the brilliant court scenes. Trollope to the life.

Who’s the book for?  Anyone who likes a good story wittily and brilliantly told, lawyers, historians, journalists - but above all anyone with an interest in the emancipation of women.

What’s the feminist interest? This is a story of the terrible damage done by the misguided parental control of a father over his daughter. The story demonstrates how far feminism has progressed in the last 150 years.

A fascinating true story, wittily told, that retains the power to shock today.