Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, Lady Stirling-Maxwell (née Sheridan; 22 March 1808 – 15 June 1877) was an English social reformer and author active in the early and mid-19th century. She left her husband in 1836, who then sued her close friend Lord Melbourne, then the Whig Prime Minister, for criminal conversation (i. e. adultery). The jury threw out the claim, but she could not obtain a divorce and was denied access to her three sons. Norton's campaigning led to the passage of the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and the Married Women's Property Act 1870. She modelled for the fresco of Justice in the House of Lords by Daniel Maclise, who chose her as a famous victim of injustice.