Westminster London 22 June 1836. It is a fine fresh morning that will become hot as the day progresses. Crowds are gathering at the Court of Common Pleas. On trial is Caroline Sheridan a beautiful & clever young woman who had been manoeuvred into marrying the Honourable George Norton when she was just nineteen. Ten years older he is a dull violent & controlling lawyer but Caroline is determined not to be a traditional wife. By her early twenties Caroline has become a respected poet & songwriter clever mimic & outrageous flirt. Her beauty & wit attract many male admirers including the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. After years of simmering jealousy Norton accuses Caroline & the Prime Minister of a criminal conversation (adultery) precipitating the scandal of the century. In Westminster Hall that day is a young Charles Dickens who would just a few months later fictionalise the event as Bardell v. Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers. After a trial lasting twelve hours the jurys not guilty verdict is immediate unanimous & sensational. Norton is a laughing stock. Angry & humiliated he cuts Caroline off as was his right under the law refuses to let her see their three sons seizes her manuscripts & letters her clothes & jewels & leaves her destitute. The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton is the extraordinary story of one womans fight for the rights of women everywhere. For the next thirty years Caroline campaigned for women & battled male-dominated Victorian society helping to write the Infant Custody Act (1839) & influenced the Matrimonial Causes (Divorce) Act (1857) & the Married Womens Property Act (1870) which gave women a separate legal identity for the first time.