Talk:Breach of promise
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Breach of promise was not based on a presumption of lost virginity (at least not in the 18th and 19th centuries) -- it was both cruder than that (based on the denial of the woman's expectation of being supported by the man's £$CASH MONEY$£), and much more subtle than that, since there were a lot of ways in which the reputation of a young never-married woman of the "genteel" classes could be damaged by a broken engagement (or an apparent period of intimacy which did not end in a publicly-announced engagement), even if few people seriously thought that she had lost her physical virginity. Churchh 12:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
