E. BelfortT Bax Describes How Bad Married Women Had It One Hundred Years Ago

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Ernest Belfort Bax: The First Renowned Anti-Feminist


E. BELFORT BAX.

1908


"MATRIMONIAL PRIVILEGES OF WOMEN

We will in the first place give a short statement of the
law of husband and wife, with a view to discovering on
which side of the equation does the weight of privilege
lie, regarding the marriage contract as it at present
exists in this country.
Let us clearly understand what are the exact limita-
tions, and what the extraordinary extent of these sex
privileges conferred by law. Rich men are, on account
of their wealth, in a more enviable position towards
any litigant in the Law Courts than are poor men.
The privilege here is of wealth. But rich women are
enormously better off in the matter of legal privilege
than are rich men, and poor women are similarly
privileged by law as against men of their own class.


THE LETTER OF THE LAW.

This privilege conferred on women arises in an
extraordinary number of cases, for the express letter of
the law discriminates in the sharpest possible manner
between men and women in the matter of legal right
and duty, of civil law advantage and criminal law
exemption.
But the letter of the law is supplemented by the bias
of tribunals and by the bias of the press, and of public
opinion, of which opinion, after all, the action of the
tribunals is but the reflection. Who interprets, enacts.
The unfair incidence of the law, bad enough by itself, is
rendered crushing by the made-up minds of judge and
jury. 3


BIAS OF TRIBUNALS.

The settled bias of the tribunals in favour of the
woman complainant, actuating magistrates, judge and
jury, operates in two ways. In the first place a woman
has only to complain against a man, and the tribunal
is already convinced of the justice of her claim. The
tribunal is only impartial if the complaint is by one
woman against another. In the next place, no adequate
repression of crime or other injury by a woman against
a man is even attempted.


BIAS OF PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION.

This tendency of the tribunals is confirmed and
rendered irresistiBle by the action of the press and public
opinion. All injuries to a woman are chronicled with
flaring headlines. Injuries by women to men are
laughed at, or worse still, passed over in silence.
The origin of this bias is a subject of deep interest, but
not one capable of being discussed within brief limits.
It is, of course, to be found in the history of England for
some centuries past--practically since the Reformation
--in so far as difference in the intensity of the sentiment
differentiates England from other European peoples. It
is to be found in the history of Europe and the race for
many centuries before the period of the great European
upheaval of the 16th century. It is enough for the
present to note that the pro-feminist prejudice exists
and is transmuted into positive rules of law, and legal
administration by the action of public opinion and the
press, Parliament, judges and juries, and crystallised
into statutory enactment by an active pro-feminist
propaganda of sex-conscious women's righters.
If anyone thinks the latter factor unimportant, it may
be sufficient to remind him of the statutory innovation 4

involving the most flagrant injustice, inasmuch as
flagrant inequality, viz.:--
1. Summary Court for Separation. Open to women
alone, except in the case of drunkenness (cf. Licensing
Act, 1902).
2. Action for Slander. Open to women alone.
3. Duty of Husband to maintain his wife--notwith-
standing her adultery.--This last a triumph of feminine
privileges enacted in 1895!
It is impossible in any distribution of the main out-
lines of sex-privilege to avoid occasionally overlapping.
One arrangement of the topics will be convenient. Let
us consider women's privileges under the head of Matri-
monial Law, and the Civil Law generally, and, further,
of the Criminal Law.
These privileges arise indirectly from the action of
the legislature, but mainly from that of the Courts, and
consist of: first, the deliberate introduction of new rules
of law and procedure, and, secondly, the retention of
some old-world privileges of women, logical enough
when women were dependent, but under modern con-
ditions engines of tyranny against men.


MATRIMONIAL PRIVILEGES OF WOMEN.

1. BREACH OF PROMISE OF MARRIAGE.

The law of George III., punishing by damages--
usually vindictive damages--violation of breach of
promise of marriage. The women's privilege to commit
perjury plays a great part in this process. A woman
swears a man promised to marry her. Judge and jury
hold this statement false, and mark the result. No one
suggests that she should be indicted for perjury. On
the contrary, the grateful male litigant, happy to
escape, settles �3,000 on her (Gore v . Lord Sudley, 10
June, 1896). 5

Furthermore, by custom of the tribunals creating the
Common Law, this action is confined in its benefits to
woman. A man suing in a like case is laughed out of
Court. This may or may not be a just privilege con-
ferred on women--that of breaking their promise free of
legal penalty, but it is obviously a privilege conferred by
the practice of the Courts on women as such. The rules
of law invalidating contracts obtained by fraud, duress,
or undue influence, have no effect as against a woman
inducing a man, by subtle device or threats of scandal,
to marry her. An experienced woman of 30 can entrap
a boy of 22 into such a promise; the Court takes no
notice of the invalidity from point of view of fair play.
But a man suing a woman of any age would be laughed
out of Court.

2. PRIVILEGE TO DEFRAUD UNDER COVER OF PROMISE
OF MARRIAGE.

This is, of course, a minor privilege compared with
that of exacting damages for breach of promise. But
it is a real privilege, nevertheless. A man gives valuable
property--jewellery, furniture, or money--to a woman
under an agreement to marry, fraudulently entered into
on her part, inasmuch as she has no power to carry out
her promise, being already married or preferring some-
one else. The man, in practice (whatever theory may
be) is not assisted to recover the property, and the
magistrate rebukes him for "unmanly" behaviour!
Contrast the other side. A woman makes a loan to a
man whom she knows to he married. He receives a
sentence of five years penal servitude.

3. MAINTENANCE.

As against her husband, the law confers on a woman
who has married him the unilateral privilege of main-
tenance. The earlier law made this privilege dependent
on her obedience, cohabitation with her husband, and 6

her observance of outwardly decent behaviour. The
present law has set her free from all these restraints.
Since 1857 the Secular Court, which then assumed juris-
diction in matrimonial matters, has given up all attempt
to enforce obedience, but the most violent methods, in-
cluding imprisonment and sequestration of the property
of the husband are employed to enforce her claim to
maintenance. By a recent Statute (the Act of 1884) the
process of imprisonment to make a wife obey an order
to return to her husband was abolished. By the famous
decision in the Jackson Case the husband was prohibited
from himself using force to compel her to return. But
the deserted wife by magisterial order can get her desert-
ing husband sent to gaol [jail]. And neither legislature nor
the Courts, which took away her duties of obedience and
cohabitation, ever dreamt of depriving her of her
privilege of being maintained by the man whom she can
flout and insult with impunity. As a successful lady
litigant (May, 1896) remarked to her husband, "There
is no law which compels me to obey or honour you, but
there is a law that you must keep me." This woman
tersely sums up the position.
In the case of a man of property the Courts will
expropriate him for the benefit of his wife. In the
case of a wage-earner the Courts from police magistrates
to Supreme Court will decree him to be her earning
slave, bound to work for her or go to prison. A wife,
no matter if rolling in wealth, is not obliged to contribute
a penny to her husband's support, even if he be incapaci-
tated from work through disease or accident. The sole
exception which the law makes in derision is that if he be
actually in such destitution as to go to the workhouse,
then the wealthy wife is obliged to pay, not to her hus-
band, but the local authorities, the cost of his main-
tenance at the exiguous scale usual in such cases.
Even a wife who, against her husband's wish, leaves
his house after assaulting and insulting him can obtain 7

against him an order for restitution of conjugal rights.
This is a mere preliminary to form a basis for a claim for
sequestration of his property for her maintenance. The
Act of 1884 forbids the Court to order imprisonment for
refusal to obey an order of restitution of conjugal rights,
but enables such a refusal to be made a ground for
confiscation of the husband's property in favour of the
wife. No reciprocity here. Imprisonment before 1884
affected both husband and wife. Sequestration of
property, the husband alone. Now imprisonment is
abolished for the wife, and so the wife goes scot free,
while the husband is as much bound as ever in person
and in property.
This iniquitous statutory rule is made use of by
women who have no wish whatever to return to their
husbands. After overbearing ill-usage and desertion of
the husband for years, the wife applies to the Court for
an order for restitution, well knowing that her unfortu-
nate victim will not obey the order. Then the robbery
of his property is completed by a second order in Court.
But no disobedience to a like order on her part enables
her property to be confiscated, or herself to be sent to
prison.

4. DISPOSITION OF PROPERTY FREE FROM CONTROL OF
HUSBAND.

By the Married Women's Property Acts a woman has
complete control over all property acquired or inherited
by her in any way, free from any claim on the part of
her husband. With cynical injustice she is left in
possession of all her old claims on her husband's
property, and the latest charter of female privilege, the
Statute of 1895, gives her claims regardless even of her
adultery. 8

This matter deserves more attention than it usually
receives. Let us consider the topics in order:--

(a) Source of Women's Property.

The piteous tales of artistic working women, of wives
robbed by their worthless husbands, from the Mrs.
Morton of fact to the Miss Trotwood [1] of fiction, formed
the foundation of the claim for a revision of the law.
Liberty for women to retain their own earnings.
Obvious equity here!
But the bulk of women's property, in 99 out of every
100 cases, is not earned by them at all. It arises from
gift or inheritance from parents, relatives, or even the
despised husband. Whenever there is any earning in
the matter it is notoriously earning by some mere man
or other. Nevertheless, under the operation of the law,
property is steadily being concentrated into women's
hands. "Once Stridhan [Woman's property] always Stridhan."

[ 1 Mrs. Morton figures to be Hannah Morton, a successful
shopkeeper in Hastings, England. Miss Trotwood is a character
in "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens. ]


(b) Control through Life.

The wife has absolute and unfettered control over her
own property, man-earned though it be, and her person.
This is the new style. But the gaoler and the broad arrow
[government mark of ownership] make the husband,
her earning slave, to be insulted and jeered with impunity.
This is the old style with a difference. "All yours is mine,
and all mine's my own." Mere man is not worth considering
when the material aggrandizement of women is concerned !

(c) Control at death.

By the Married Women's Property Acts, a woman
has complete power of leaving her property away from
her husband, by will, even though in his prosperity he
gave it to her. The husband can be prevented from
doing so, by the wife's suing him for maintenance, when
his property, or as much of it as judges think fit, is
settled on her, and can no longer he disposed of by his 9

will. Conveyancers aver that the steady tendency
for a woman to leave property acquired sfromome man
always to a woman. A silent revolution in succession is
being accomplished. But the man is left under his old
burdens of supporting his wife.

(d) Bankrupting Husband for Money Lent.

A wife is privileged to recover judgment against, and
bankrupt her husband for any money she may have lent
him, and this privilege is no dead letter.
A husband does not lend, but gives money to his wife.
If he were to attempt by legal documents to turn it into
a loan, he would discover once again that what is sauce
for the goose, is by no means sauce for the gander.
There is no case on record of a husband daring to sue
his wife for a loan.

5. DISPOSITION OF PROPERTY FREE FROM CONTROL OF
CREDITORS.

Not merely as against the husband, but against her
creditors, the married woman is in a position of enviable
privilege. A married woman, even when separated
from her husband, and released from all duties towards
him or her children, retains her privilege of having her
property exempt from seizure for debt.
Technicalities would be tedious, but the following is
the practical working of the law. In legal phraseology,
if a married woman enters into a contract, and if (an
important if) there is no restraint against anticipation
in her settlement, then her property, or some of it, may
be attached. As to the restraint against anticipating
income, this clause, introduced by Lord Chancellor
Thurlow to protect an interesting relative of his against
her husband, is practically to be found in every settle-
ment, being now useful against the creditor, although
no longer needed against the husband. 10

6. VICARIOUS RESPONSIBILITY OF HUSBAND TOWARDS
THIRD PERSONS FOR HIS WIFE'S MISCONDUCT.

The husband is liable, and his wife is not, for all the
civil wrongs (torts) she may commit. He has no control
over her, but serves as her whipping-boy. This, though
she publicly defames and insults him in every way, and
has deserted him.
As Sir Frank Lockwood put it, one has the deep
consolation of knowing that if Mrs. Jackson utters
slanders Mr. Jackson can be sued.
Under the older English law, when the wife was
"sous la verge de son marrye" (the canon law sub
virga viri [under the rod of the man/husband ] ),
the rule was reasonable enough. Now, however,
it is only an illustration of the pro-feminist bias of the
Courts. Every moth-eaten scrap of privilege, which is
in favour of the woman, they retain.
All privileges of the husband, no matter how firmly
established, they deny as having ever existed. Look at
the astounding declaration of Lord Halsbury in the
Jackson case, that the husband never had the right in
English law to restrain his wife ! ! !

7. IMPUNITY FOR CRIMES COMMITTED IN HUSBAND'S
PRESENCE.

THE "DOCTRINE OF COERCION "

Again, a pious arch�ology animates the judges when
the woman is to be benefited. Notwithstanding the
revolutionary changes in the law, another old-world
privilege of the "woman under the rod" is reserved for
the dominating female of to-day. If her husband is
present when she is committing a crime, a married
woman is presumed by an intelligent administration of
justice to have acted under his coercion. This is some-
times amusing, when, as often happens, the woman is
the instigator of the crime. 11

This precious privilege is nominally confined to cases
of minor importance, and in special is supposed not to
affect murder. In practice it affects all crimes, and is
no dead letter, as illustrative cases can show.

8. FACILITIES FOR DIVORCE.

No man can obtain a divorce except by a terribly
expensive process in the High Court at a minimum
charge of forty pounds. This means a denial of justice
to the vast bulk of the male population. Any woman, by
the asking for it, can get a summary separation and
confiscation of her husband's property, and an order for
her maintenance out af his earnings from the nearest
police court. Recent Statutes confer this privilege.
This process, which costs only a few shillings, the
husband has to pay for.
But divorce or no divorce, the wife's property, where-
ever acquired, cannot he touched. There is no question
here of interfering with her "earnings" though she be
an opera singer with �40,000 a year. Similarly with
her capitalised property, which, though man-acquired,
as usual, cannot be touched.
If her property, as well as her husband's, has been
handed over to the trustees of her marriage settlement
the Court has some power to make orders as to the
income of that property, but in practice uses it only for
the benefit of the children.
No matter how flagrant her conduct the wildest dream
never suggested that the wife's "earnings" (as artist,
opera singer, or what not) no matter how exorbitant,
should ever be touched for the benefit even of her
children. That a portion should be sequestrated for the
maintenance of the husband--even though a husband is
incapacitated by disease or accident--of course would
be a barbarous suggestion, hardly to be discussed out-
side Bedlam [famous insane asylum.] 12

But precisely analogous orders as to the hard-earned
and miserably stinted wages of the male earner are
made with scandalous levity in the Police Court every
day. A working man, earning eighteen or twenty shil-
lings a week, is calmly ordered to provide twelve shil-
lings a week for life for the keep of a clamorous and
malignant shrew.
The denial to the working man of the same facilities
for summary separation, through the police court,
granted to every brawling wife who chooses to ask for
it, simply means that the man is in a state of legal
subjection to his wife. The wife has but to scream and
appeal to the nearest policeman, and prison, separation,
custody of children, and maintenance, are decreed as
matters of course.
A woman can habitually repudiate her duties, neglect
her children, pawn her husband's and children's clothes,
waylay her husband at his work, and disgrace him be-
fore his friends, procure his dismissal, assault him, and
there is no remedy open to the working man. To tell
him that he can appeal to the Divorce Court at a cost of
forty pounds, is a piece of savage and scornful irony.
He might as well be told that he can, if he has the
money, promote a private Act of Parliament, at the cost
of some thousand pounds.
If goaded by intolerable misery, he so far forgets
himself as to strike his torturer, he is sent to gaol, with
his condemnation headed ''A cowardly brute.''
The special facilities for women to obtain divorce,
separation confiscation of the husband's property, do
not end with the provision of a cheap and expeditious
Court for women alone. If the woman elects to go to
the Divorce Division of the High Court, the path is
made similarly smooth for her. Her unfortunate hus-
band, who may afterwards be held to be quite guiltless
of the lying charges brought against him, is ordered to 13

find money for her solicitors, and has to pay in advance!!
He must also pay her alimony pendente lite [during the
litigation]. Then when he is dragged to Court by a
heartless and vindictive woman, he finds the scales still
more heavily weighted against him. The rules might be
formulated somewhat in this way:--

1. Every woman's statement complaining of her hus-
band is assumed to he true until he conclusively proves
it to be false. The onus probandi [burden of proof] is on
him and the difficulty he has to face is that of proving a negative.
2. The slightest harshness or even carelessness of
speech or behaviour, no matter under what provocation
(the records of years being searched to find one) is
absolutely final proof of "cruelty" if committed by the
husband. No amount of insolence and brutality--short
of actual attempt to maim--is cruelty in a wife. Any-
thing she does is a pardonable exhibition of feminine
temper.
3. The husband and his witnesses are prosecuted for
perjury on the slightest inaccuracy being discerned in
their narration of facts. Deliberate perjury is passed
over if committed by the wife, her paramour, or her
witnesses.
4. No charge, no matter of what infamous crime,
falsely made by a wife against a husband, is a ground
for his refusing to take her back. If he should refuse
the Court confiscates for her benefit as such of his
property or earnings as they think fit.
One result of these instructive rules of practice is to be
found in the number of undefended divorce suits. It is
a common saying of the legal profession that multitudes
of husbands allow judgments to go against them by
default, as they are quite conscious that no man not
of absolutely angelic character--unless he be himself
a lawyer--has any chances before a prejudiced pro-
feminist judge and jury. 14


9. ENDOWMENT OF ADULTERESS OUT OF DAMAGES.

Here we come upon a marvellous specimen of judicial
legislation, wherein Parliament has not been troubled.
In case of a husband succeeding under the Act of 1895
he will have difficulty in future in getting a divorce from
his wife by reason of adultery. He is entitled to
damages from the co-respondent for the injury to him,
done in breaking up his home, and exposing him to
mental suffering and material loss. The damages are
supposed to he paid to the husband on this basis--that
they were in compensation for his loss. They are still
assessed on this basis, but at the end of the nineteenth
century we find the judges creating a legal fiction.
Influenced by the wave of feminist sentimentality, the
judges have actually seized on these damages as a fund
for endowing the adulteress.
The way this insidious device was introduced was as
follows:--It not unfrequently happened that a husband
assented of his own free will to the damages, which in
law were his own property, being settled on the children
of the marriage. Sometimes he included his late wife
in that dedication of the fund. This was generous of
him, as the woman had obviously forfeited her claims on
him. Now, however, the judge, without consulting
parliament, has deprived the injured husband of the
merit of generosity. Without the husband's consent, in
fact, notwithstanding his opposition, the judge will
hand over the damages, which in strict law are the
husband's, to such trustees as they think fit, and trans-
form the fund into an endowment for the adulteress who
has prudently selected a rich man as co-respondent.
To understand the iniquity of this proceeding, let us
take the opposite case. In some American States the
wife's trade union has procured the passing of a law
that enables a wife to sue for damages for her husband's
seduction. What would be thought of the American
Courts if they seized on the damages so secured and 15

settled them as a provision on the delinquent husband?
or (to add a grotesque completeness to the parallel)
settle them on the husband and his children by his fair
seducer?
Yet a similar piece of monstrous injustice--to men,
though not to women--is the law of England to-day.
Our pro-feminist judges are presumably indifferent to
the fact that the subsidy of the adulteress in this way
can have but one result, namely, to "encourager les
autres [to encourage the others]."


10. CUSTODY OF CHILDREN.

It has always in England been laid down as a funda-
mental law based on public policy, that the custody of
children and their education is a duty incumbent on the
father. It is said to be so fundamental that he is not
permitted to waive his exercise of the right by pre-
nuptial contract. (See the Agar v. Ellis Case.)
This rule of the Common Law of England is of course
in harmony with the policy of all Europe and Christen-
dom, as well as with the historic conditions of the
European social organisation, if not with the primal
instincts of the race.
Nevertheless, fundamental and necessary as the rule
may be, the pro-feminist magistrates and judges of
England are bent apparently on ignoring it with a light
heart. They have not merely retained the old rule that
the custody of infants of tender years remains with the
mother until the child attains the age of seven. But
they go much further than that. As a matter of course,
and without considering in the least the interests of the
child, or of society at large, they hand over the custody
and education of all the children to the litigant wife,
whenever she establishes--an easy thing to do--a flimsy
and often farcical case of technical "cruelty."
The victim husband has the privilege of maintaining
the children as well as herself out of his property or 16

earnings, and has the added consolation of knowing
that they will brought up to detest him.
Even in the extreme case where a deserting wife takes
with her the children of the marriage, there is practically
no redress for the husband if in narrow circumstances.
The police courts will not interfere. The divorce court,
as already stated, is expensive to the point of prohibi-
tion. In any case the husband has to face a tribunal
already prejudiced in favour of the female, and the
attendant scandal of a process will probably have no
other result than to injure his children and their future
prospects in life.

II. I MPUNITY FOR OFFENCES A GAINST HUSBAND.

The wife in England enjoys either absolute immunity
or liability to merely nominal punishment for all offences
against her husband committed during marriage. Con-
trast with this the rule as regards offences by the
husband towards the wife. Gaol and public obloquy
are his portion.
This matter will be referred to again in considering
the criminal law privileges of women in general (married
or unmarried) as regards trial, sentence, remission of
punishment, and gaol-treatment. It may here he noted
that feminine exemption, as specially regards Matri-
monial Law, is established in one of the following
ways:--Either by
1. The text of the law expressly, which discriminates
between wife's offences and husband's, punishing the
latter and leaving unpunished the wife. For instance,
in cases of desertion; or by
2. The administrators of the law who have established
a rule of practice discriminating in favour of the woman,
although nominally the law is the same for both. For
instance, in cases of cruelty, perjury, and bigamy ;or by
the fact that 17

3. Whenever a pecuniary fine is imposed, nominally
on the wife, the husband is the vicarious sufferer. He
has to pay.
With this preface let us consider the law and practice
as regards a wife's offences against the husband, in the
order of their frequency.

(a) Impunity for Insolence and Insult.

The most elaborate cruelty in the way of insolence
and insult is unpunishable by the law when committed
by the wife. The husband remains bound to support
his torturer, who may publicly waylay and insult him,
harass him at his work, procure his dismissal, libel him
by postcards sent to his workshop, or to his club. If he
he a rich man, he can get some tardy redress in the way
of palliation; but he remains liable to divorce and expro-
priation at his wife's behest. The rod, the cucking
school, [1] the indictment as a scold at the assizes were the
methods adopted by the Law of England and sanctioned
by the Canon Law, until the present century, to repress
such outrages. Now the feminine noblesse can torture
their slaves with impunity.
If the husband retaliates, the magistrate's order
promptly consigns him to gaol and the prisoners' lash.

[ 1 Cucking stool: "An instrument of punishment no longer in use,
consisting of a chair in which the offender was tied and exposed to
public derision or ducked in water." American Heritage Dictionary. ]


(b) Impunity for Neglect.

The wife may repudiate every one of her duties, may
utterly neglect her household, her children, and her
husband. No remedy either in the police court or the
divorce court for the husband.
If the husband neglect the wife in this connection--
"neglect" is a very elastic word--consequences ensue
of which the chief are-
(1) The prompt police court separation order,
and confiscation of property and wages of hus-
band (enforced by imprisonment). 18

(2) This so-called neglect of the husband enables
the wife to commit adultery with impunity, yet still
she has her claim to maintenance. (Act of 1895.)
Neglect on the part of the wife is no legal offence at
all. Neglect on the part of the husband has been con-
strued to mean anything of which the wife likes to
complain. For example, an actor who is obliged to
remain late at the theatre comes home late. This is held
to be "neglect," with the usual penal consequences.
What between the upper millstone of "cruelty" and the
nether millstone of "neglect" the unfortunate husband
can now be condemned alike, if he does something, or if
he does nothing--anything the wife chooses to call so
being construed as either "cruelty" or "neglect."

(c) Impunity for Libel and Slander of Husband.

No lying charge, no matter how gross, by word or
writing is punishable if committed by the wife against
the husband. She is free to slander and libel him before
servants and strangers, solicitors and pressmen; accuse him
of every crime known to the Old Bailey [Central Criminal Court]
calendar, and write postcards to his club or to his employer and
[no] penal consequences ensue as long as she lives in his
house. Her husband cannot leave her without incurring
punishment.
If the husband, not to say slanders, but speaks dis-
respectfully to his wife before servants or strangers, she
is quite entitled to leave his house at once, and claim the
usual separation and confiscation order, and deprive him
of the custody of the children whom he is bound to
support.

(d) Impunity for Waylaying and Procuring Dismissal.

A vindictive wife who courts publicity and scandal has
the average respectable man--unless he be an angel or
a lawyer--at her absolute mercy. If he be a man of the
middle-classes, she can waylay him at his office and 19

destroy his business connection. She can call at his
club and secure his expulsion. If he be a working man
she can interview his employer and secure his prompt
dismissal. She can render him a laughing-stock to all
his acquaintances, and at the same time achieve his
financial ruin. The law and its administrators stand
idly by. No remedy for the helpless male. The "poor
woman" (they are always that) must have been ill-
used; there is no such thing as savage vindictiveness
and recklessness in the female.

(e) Impunity for Violence and Assault.

If a man under any provocation, no matter how
galling--insolence or violence--strikes a woman, he is
sent to hard labour, divorced, and his property con-
fiscated, or his earnings hypothecated--and all this
through the prompt instrumentality of the police-court.
A woman may assault, stab, set fire to her husband, and
he has no remedy, except to summon her to the police-
court, where, if she be fined, he is compelled to pay the
fine, and as likely as not is laughed at. If her crime be
revoltingly atrocious, she is perhaps sent to prison--for
one-twentieth part of the time awarded to a male
offender for a like offence. On her being released, her
husband, unless he be a rich man, is bound to take her
back, and, rich or poor, support her. The prompt and
inexpensive police-court divorce is not for him.
A humane police magistrate actually had to stoop to
make terms with a cruel and murderous criminal. A
wife strikes a felon blow at her husband, renders him
insensible, and he has to be removed to the hospital.
His face is badly scarred, six stitches having to be put
into the wounds. The magistrate, wishing to prevent
murder, binds her over to come up for judgment, if
called upon, on condition that she kindly consents to
sign a separation deed, permitting her unfortunate hus- 20

hand slave to live apart from her. The slave of course
has to support her all the same. ( Morning Advertiser,
2nd June, 1896. Thames Police Court.)

(f) Impunity for Adultery.

The latest charter of women's privileges--the Act
of 1895--enables a woman to commit adultery with
Impunity--provided she can allege her husband neg-
lected her. As "neglect" usually means that she
drove him to the public-house or to his club by over-
bearing violence and insolence, the present law means
that if a woman has a fancy for adultery, all she need do
is to pick a quarrel with her husband about anything she
likes, then she can indulge in desertion and adultery
with impunity, and claim the usual divorce and confis-
cation from a sympathising tribunal.
It is singular that the law on this very offence should
be perpetually cited by women's righters as her chief
grievance, next to the absence of the Parliamentary
franchise--and as the standing illustration of the "cruel
inequality and injustice as between the woman and the
man" of the English law of divorce. If a woman, we
are told, commits adultery, a man can obtain absolute
divorce, but if a woman sues she must prove cruelty as
well.
Now as to the earlier law, this was the rule, and
something could be said to defend it. It is obvious that
if a woman commits adultery she may introduce a
*** child to her husband's family, and saddle him
with a pecuniary burden and them with an onerous
relationship which it is unjust should be borne by them
[which would be unjust if borne by them]. If a
husband has illicit relations, he does not bring home
his *** offspring. But since 1857 the secular court
has practically abolished the discriminations. Let the
wife prove illicit relations by the husband, and she has
always had her divorce for the asking. The reason
is simple. The Courts will hold, to oblige a wife, that 21
anything is cruelty if committed by a husband. It is
cruelty to come home late from his club; it is cruelty to
spend an evening with friends without her company.
It is cruelty to hold her hands if she tries to strike or to
bite him.
However, these refinements are no longer necessary
to the pro-feminist tribunals of England. The last
charter of feminine privilege (the Act of 1895) has set
the balance of express law the other way. Now a wife
can commit adultery with impunity--if induced by the
"neglect" of her husband. No such excuse for the
husband.

(g) Impunity for Desertion.

A woman can have her husband arrested and sent to
gaol if he leaves her, even though her own violence and
cruelty led to his flight. The husband gets no assist-
ance from the law if his wife deserts him.
The method in which this privilege has been worked
out was simple enough. It consisted in abolishing all
the husband's control over the wife's actions and
property, and, on the other hand, retaining all the wife's
power of legal compulsion on the husband, with added
powers.
These changes have practically come in during the
period since 1857, when a secular court for divorce was
established. Under the earlier law, prior to, and long
after the Reformation, ecclesiastical censure restrained
the deserting wife. But the secular common law also
lent its aid to the husband. He could prevent her by
force from leaving his house, and could bring her back
if she had escaped. More, he had an action for
"harbouring" against any of her relations or strangers
who assisted her in straying away--as late as George
III. a husband's action for damages on this ground was
successful. 22

An exception to the general rule, and even this was of
doubtful validity, was introduced under Henry VIII. A
wife could be assisted to leave her husband's house if
she were journeying to the Bishop's Court to seek a
separation.
But the latest feminist rulings of the judges have quite
swept away such fine distinctions as those of 1857.
(1) By their fiction of "cruelty"--anything a
husband does being "cruelty"--they have enabled
any woman who likes to leave on a pretended
excuse.
(2) By procuring the passing of an Act (Lord
Chancellor Cairns' Act, 1884) the Courts got rid of
their theoretical duty of ordering a wife to be
imprisoned for refusing to obey an order of
restitution of conjugal rights. Nothing in the way
of compulsion by restraint of person or property is
to be applied to the wife. But by a cynical stroke
this Act provides that if a husband refuses to obey,
his property is to be confiscated. And, more out-
rageous than all, the wife's power to procure the
arrest and imprisonment of the husband by the
magistrate's Court is left untouched.
A case in which the wife of a clergyman caused her
husband to be arrested on board a ship going to
America, and sentenced to hard labour by alleging his
desertion, deserves special notice. True that the clergy-
man, having means, could appeal to a higher Court and
have the iniquitous sentence quashed. But the working
man would have had to serve his allotted term in the
prison cell. And no one has ever suggested that this
wife should be punished. (See the case of the Rev.
Peter MacDonald Neilson, June, 1894.)
The notorious Jackson case furnished another pic-
ture. Here a woman is upheld by the Court of Appeal
in deserting her husband and condemning him to life- 23

long celibacy. He has absolutely no remedy against
her. If she commits any civil injury against any one, he
can be sued. If he should live with any other woman,
Mrs. Jackson can get a portion of the property confis-
cated and settled on herself. She is not obliged to ask
for a divorce, she can still keep him bound by limiting
her demand to a judicial separation.
The criticisms which some lawyers have made on this
decision are wide of the mark. It was quite in harmony
with the later current of authority, though in violent
conflict with the settled Common Law of last century.
Tie the man and let the woman free, is the prevalent
judicial theory of to-day.
Though the judges could obtain the passing of Lord
Chancellor Cairns' Act, 1884, freeing the wife from
imprisonment for desertion, there has been no sugges-
tion of promoting an Act to enable a man in Mr.
Jackson's position to obtain a divorce.
So enamoured have they become with the new doctrine
of feminine predominance in the relation of marriage,
that the judges of the House of Lords have actually
extended to Scotland their theory of tying the man and
letting the woman free. For over three centuries the
law of Scotland has provided that desertion for four
years on the part of either spouse is ground for absolute
divorce, with right of second marriage. For all that
long period the Act has been found most salutary in
effect. Now the judges in the House of Lords, in the
year 1894, have practically repealed it. They have
refused to grant a Scotch litigant divorce, although his
wife has deserted him for over four years, and at the
same time abducted his child. They allege, as the
ground for this astonishing "new readings" of the law,
that the husband did not really want her to return. As
this can be alleged in every case in which a husband
does not slavishly implore a shrew to come back, the
result is that when a vindictive woman wants to prevent 24

the man remarrying, she can successfully resist his claim
for divorce. This salutary Act of Scots Parliament has
been offered up as a whole burnt offering on the altar of
the dominant female.

(h) Impunity to Commit Bigamy.

We now come to a flagrant instance where the law
professes to apply impartially to masculine and feminine
offenders. But the feminist administrators of the law
have created an undisputed feminine privilege. Long
terms of penal servitude await the male bigamist. The
female is privileged to indulge in this form of deceit and
theft with impunity.
For, be it noted, it is almost invariably a desire to
obtain economic advantage that impels the woman to
this particular crime, the essence of which, of course, is
the deceit practised on the innocent party. In the cases
where there is no economic motive and where no deceit
is practised on the second spouse (to use the con-
venient terms of the Scottish Law) no punishment is
ever inflicted on the woman, and perhaps none is speci-
ally required. The possession of the "marriage lines"
is sought for as a social advantage, though based on
the deception of a public official.
But in striking contrast to this practice, the man who
contracts a second, i.e. , illegal, alliance, even though he
goes through the marriage ceremony solely to please his
second partner, and although she is in no way deceived
as to his status, may, even though in addition he has
been deserted by his first wife, he arrested and sent to
prison at the bidding of the woman who deserts him.
This, however, is not the full extent of the privilege.
Men who, from passion, or for whatever motive, deceive
the second partner, are severely punished. That is to
say, a woman already deserting her husband, may
entangle a man into an alliance with her which he 25

believes to be honourable and legal: may make him the
father of her children, and hamper him with the life-long
obligation to support these unhappy offspring: may thus
brand her own children with the stamp of illegitimacy,
may squander his earnings for years, may finish the tale
of her favours by involving him in a suit in the divorce
court as a co-respondent, and in a prosecution in the
criminal courts as an unwilling witness against his chil-
dren's mother, and may do all this with absolute freedom
from legal penalty. Let a man attempt to improve his
financial position, nay, let him, even at a pecuniary
loss to himself, exercise the least similar deceit on any
woman, and the Criminal Courts descend on him with
swift retribution.
The following article in a leading London daily news-
paper is instructive:--
''The sentence of seven years penal servitude passed
by the Common Sergeant yesterday upon Charles Baker,
who has for many years successfully practised bigamy
as a profession, is not one day too long. Mr. Baker
is evidently a person of irresistible fascination to ladies,
and but for the rare courage of one of his victims,
who had him tracked through both hemispheres, he
might in time have bigamously married the residue of
our unmarried women possessing suitable dowers.
Quite another sort of bigamist was the cause of an
application to Mr. Lane at the South Western Police
Court. This was a young woman, who having married
yesterday's applicant, while her first husband was still
living, was strangely purged of her offence by Mr.
Justice Hawkins after a day's imprisonment, on condi-
tion that she returned--not to her legitimate spouse, but
to the young man who irregularly succeeded him. This
she did, but not for long, as the same young man had to
complain yesterday, that she had, in turn, deserted him,
for an old gentleman she used to go after before. The
applicant, like a sensible young man, seemed able to 26

support this with philosophy, but what did raise his ire
was her threat to prosecute him if he did not maintain
her, against which he sought--and naturally obtained--
protection. The fickle young woman is evidently still
unconversant with the rules of the game. Perhaps when
she has tried as many husbands as Mr. Baker has
married wives, she will know better. Really it is
getting time to mete out equal treatment to masculine
and feminine offenders."-- Daily Chronicle , May 21,
1896.

(i) Impunity for False Charges on Oath.

No crime is too abominable to be imputed by a wife,
with absolute impunity, against a husband. More pre-
cise details need not be given, as recent instances will
occur to the public mind of notorious and infamous ill-
usage of a husband in this way by a heartless and vin-
dictive woman. But the Public Prosecutor is silent
when the false accusation is brought by one of the
privileged sex. Prosecutions of women for perjury in
a divorce suit are unknown.
And, be it observed, this privilege extends to all
female friends or hirelings of the wife. These persons
are allowed to accuse, with elaborately-prepared details
of corroboration, the husband of the woman litigant of
committing adultery with themselves. They are never
punished. An obliging maiden sister--to help her
married sister to procure divorce and confiscation of
property against a troublesome husband--swears that
the husband committed adultery with herself, the wife's
sister! The judge and jury find this story a concocted
lie. The infamous perjurer is not punished--is not even
prosecuted. Obliging maid servants every day come
forward to allege their own or some other woman's
"immoral relations" with the victim husband. No one
ever dreams of prosecuting them. It would be waste
of time and money--as no jury would convict. 27

(k) Impunity for Perjured Denials of Guilt.

Women, it is notorious, every day perjure themselves
in divorce suits, by denying that they committed adultery
when their guilt is manifest. They are never prose-
cuted. The administrators of the law show by their
practice--though not in articulate words--that they hold
such perjury a venial fault, if not, indeed, a justifiable
means of self-defence in the case of holy, inviolate
woman.
This privilege, like the analogous one of bringing
lying charges against a husband, extends to the wife's
friends and hirelings. Let a husband untruly deny his
illicit connection with a woman if his wife is the accuser.
The Public Prosecutor intervenes, as a case decided in
June, 1896, shows clearly enough, when the male went
to penal servitude.
Yet, be it observed, it is only the man's denying with
the object of protecting himself against his wife that is
punished. If the man he not a husband, but a co-
respondent: if he deny the truth with the laudable
object of protecting a wife (who happens to be an
adulteress--but that does not strip her of her privilege)
then his perjury is pardonable and chivalrous. The
co-respondent is safe under the shadow of the wife. In
fact he must lie. And this brings us to the next head
of privilege.

(l) Impunity for Treacherous Confession of Guilt.

Here we have a most striking rule--No woman is
supposed to be a cowardly traitor if she turns "wife's
evidence" against a man, and truly alleges that he had
illicit relations with herself. She is assisting justice,
promoting morality, showing true repentance by open
confession, and aiding in the women's trade union
object of keeping down man, the slave! Her treachery
to her accomplice is condoned. 28

But a man who would dare to turn "husband's
evidence" against a wife, cannot be found within the
four seas. The reason stares one in the face. Such a
witness would not he welcomed as a servant of justice,
and a repentant sinner. No! he would be esteemed by
judge, jury, press and public to be a loathsome reptile,
unfit for human society. A howl of execration would
drive him from the land. Such a depth of morbid senti-
ment has been reached that even if a man charged with
immoral relations with a wife, refuses or omits--pre-
sumably through religious or conscientious motives--
to come forward and perjure himself on her behalf, an
indignant press comments on his conduct, and tells him
he has not acted as a gentleman.

(m) Impunity to Procure Adultery.

A wife seeking divorce and confiscation of her
husband's property can exercise all her privileges of
violence, insolence, and, under her recent charter, of
adultery, without inconvenience, but she can in addition
make him guilty as well as herself, with the trivial
difference that he will be punished. A wife can get
female detectives to send female seducers in her hus-
hand's path, and can then produce her hirelings in the
box with conclusive proofs of the husband's and their
own guilt.
If the attempt be made on the husband's side there is
swift retribution. In the first place as the adultery was
committed with his own connivance she is quite absolved
from legal responsibility. But more follows. At this
moment, such witnesses on a husband's side can be sent
to prison for successful conspiracy to procure the
adultery of a wire. The wife herself wins her suit.

12. IMPUNITY TO MURDER HUSBAND.

Exactly as in the case of bigamy, the law on murder
and homicide are nominally the same for men as for 29

women. But if a wife by poisoning or violence, kills
her husband, the administrators of the law show in
practice what can be done by twisting a text. The
matter will again be referred to under the Criminal
Law, but provisionally the rules may be reduced to form
somewhat as follows:--
(1) The least excuse is sufficient to reduce the
crime from murder to manslaughter.
(2) All the wife's statements against her husband
are assumed to be true until they are proved to be
false.
(3) The proof of the actual deed of crime must be
much more conclusive than in the case of a man.
(4) If the verdict be [by] a mere chance one of murder,
a sympathetic judge announces he will forward to
the proper quarter the sympathetic jury's recom-
mendation to mercy. This recommendation is acted
on by the Home Secretary as a matter of course in
the case of a woman.
(5) If the verdict is, as it usually is, one of man-
slaughter, a shamefully inadequate or possibly a
merely nominal sentence is imposed.

(a) Poisoning.

This peculiarly treacherous crime is a legitimate mode
of self-defence if practised by a wife on her husband.

(b) Violence.

A wife is still "weak woman" when armed with a
poker, a metal pot, a vitriol bottle, a petroleum can, or a
revolver. If these lethal substances killed her husband
it must have been by accident. In any case he had
taken her "for better or worse," and had to put up with
the consequences. Why did he cross her temper?
Besides, even if she were ill-tempered, why did he not
make a better selection when marrying? The elimina- 30

tion of thoughtless males is rather useful on the whole
to the progress of the race.
The decisions to which this line of argument, con-
scious or sub-conscious, leads judges and juries,
shamefully neglectful of their public trust, may be seen
from the appended cases, selected haphazard from a
newspaper file.

(c) Poisoning a Husband.

Mrs. Maybrick was tried at Liverpool Assizes for
poisoning her husband. She read a written statement
by herself (Mr. Justice Stephens ordered that she be
not permitted to communicate with her lawyers before
writing it) to the effect that she administered the poison
to her husband at his own request. The judge and
jury accepted her statement that she administered the
poison, but disbelieved her statement that it was at his
own request, and, wonderful to relate, she was convicted
of murder, but the Home Secretary commuted her
sentence; and after undergoing a few years' imprison
ment she is now at large.

(d) Setting a Husband on Fire.

Mary O'Reardon, August 1st, 1894, poured oil over
her husband, and deliberately set him on fire with a
lighted paper. Sentenced at the Central Criminal Court
to six years' penal servitude.
The offence was plainly wilful murder. The man had
shortly before attempted to commit suicide--being
driven to the attempt by her ill-usage.

(e) Setting a Husband on Fire.

Catherine Chilton (Durham Assizes, Nov. 24th, 1894)
threw a lighted lamp at her husband. Sentenced to
twelve months' hard labour for manslaughter. The
judge described it as a wanton and wicked act, and
said it was a mercy for the prisoner that the jury had
reduced the original charge to one of manslaughter. 31

(f) Stabbing a Husband.

Annie Hibberd, August, 1894, stabbed her husband
twice, remarking, "Revenge is sweet.'' Found guilty
of manslaughter at the Central Criminal Court, and
sentenced to six years' penal servitude.

(g) Driving a Waggon over a Husband.

Jane Payne, August 18th, 1894, thrust her husband
off a waggon, and then deliberately backed the horses,
driving the wheels over him twice. Both legs fractured.
He died a few hours afterwards. Found guilty of man-
slaughter.

(h) Setting a Husband and Child on Fire.

Jane Ann Trelawney Baker ([age] 32) pleaded guilty to
manslaughter of her husband and child by throwing a
lighted lamp at the former. She was sentenced to three
days' imprisonment, which meant her immediate release,
and on leaving the dock remarked, amid the sympathy
of the Court, that she was a childless widow, alone in
the world ! ! !--Central Criminal Court, December 14th,
1893.

(i) Killing a Husband by Throwing a Knife at Him.

At the Central Criminal Court, October 24th, 1894, a
married woman surrendered to answer an indictment
charging her with the manslaughter of her husband.
The defence was that the prisoner did not fling the knife
with the intention of killing her husband. She threw
the knife in a moment of great mental irritation, and it
unfortunately struck the deceased. The jury could not
agree to a verdict and were discharged. The case was
put back until the following week for counsel in the
meantime to consider if it were necessary to proceed
further with the case. Mr. Justice Wright, in allowing
the prisoner out on a recognizance, told her that she
need not attend unless she received notice to do so. The 32

judge, it should be added, who throughout the trial
appeared favourable to the prisoner, disallowed various
questions of the prosecution as to the previous relations
with the husband, and cut short the medical evidence,
saying that he did not like to see the time of the Court
wasted with cases such as these, or words to that effect.
Of course not! Mere husband killing, alter all--what
is that? In the opposite case, that of killing a wife by
the husband, how often have judges been careful to
point out to the jury that any unlawful assault, if death
happened to result from it, was, in the eyes of the law,
wilful murder!"


--
And tell them "If you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear" -
from The Secret Policeman's Handbook

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing -
Edmund Burke

Truth is hate to those who hate the truth - Alexandra

In times of deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act - George
Orwell



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