WIFE-TORTURE W ENGLAND. 



41 



when inflicted by a strong man on a woman ; but 

 mild in comparison of the kickings, and tram- 

 plings, and " purrings " with hob-nailed shoes and 

 clogs, of what we can scarcely, in this connec- 

 tion, call the " dark, and true, and tender north." 

 As Mr. Sergeant Pulling remarks : l " Nowhere is 

 the ill-usage of woman so systematic as in Liver- 

 pool, and so little hindered by the strong arm of 

 the law ; making the lot of a married woman, 

 whose locality is the ' kicking district ' of Liver- 

 pool, simply a duration of suffering and subjec- 

 tion to injury and savage treatment, far worse 

 than that to which the wives of mere savages are 

 used." It is in the centres of dense mercantile 

 and manufacturing populations that this offense 

 reaches its climax. In London the largest return 

 for one year (in the Parliamentary Report on Bru- 

 tal Assaults) of brutal assaults on women was 

 351. In Lancashire, with a population of almost 

 2,500,000, the largest number was 194. In Staf- 

 ford, with a population of 750,000, there were 113 

 cases. In the West Riding, with 1,500,000, 152 ; 

 and in Durham, with 508,666, no less than 267. 

 Thus, roughly speaking, there are nearly five 

 times as many wife-beaters of the more brutal 

 kind, in proportion to the population, in Durham 

 as in London. What are the conditions of life 

 among the working-classes in those great " hives 

 of industry " of which we talk so proudly ? It is 

 but justice that we should picture the existence 

 of the men and women in such places before we 

 pass to discuss the deeds which darken it. 



They are lives out of which almost every soft- 

 ening and ennobling element has been withdrawn, 

 and into which enter brutalizing influences almost 

 unknown elsewhere. They are lives of hard, ugly, 

 mechanical toil in dark pits and hideous factories, 

 amid the grinding and clanging of engines and 

 the fierce heat of furnaces, in that Black Coun- 

 try where the green sod of earth is replaced by 

 mounds of slag and shale, where no flower grows, 

 no fruit ripens, scarcely a bird sings ; where the 

 morning has no freshness, the evening no dews; 

 where the spring sunshine cannot pierce the foul 

 curtain of smoke which overhangs these modern 

 Cities of the Plain, and where the very streams and 

 rivers run discolored and steaming with stench, 

 like Styx and Phlegethon, through their banks of 

 ashes. If " God made the country and man made 

 the town," we might deem that Ahrimanes de- 

 vised this Tartarus of toil, and that here we had 

 at last found the spot where the Psalmist might 

 seek in vain for the handiwork of the Lord. 



1 " Transactions Social Science Association," 187G, 

 p. 345. 



As we now and then, many of us, whirl through 

 this land of darkness in express-trains, and draw 

 up our carriage-windows that we may be spared 

 the smoke and dismal scene, we often reflect 

 that the wonder is, not that the dwellers there 

 should lose some of the finer poetry of life, 

 the more delicate courtesies of humanity, but that 

 they should remain so much like other men, and 

 should so often rise to noble excellence and intel- 

 ligence, rather than have developed, as would 

 have seemed more natural, into a race of beings 

 relentless, hard, and grim, as their own iron ma- 

 chines — beings of whom the Cyclops of the Greek 

 and the Gnomes of the Teuton imaginations were 

 the foreshadowings. Of innocent pleasure in such 

 lives there can, alas ! be very little ; and the hun- 

 ger of Nature for enjoyment must inevitably be 

 supplied (among all save the few to whom intel- 

 lectual pursuits may suffice) by the grosser grati- 

 fications of the senses. Writers who have never 

 attempted to realize what it must be to hear ugly 

 sounds, and smell nauseous odors, and see hide- 

 ous sights, all day long, from year's end to year's 

 end, are angry with these Black Country artisans 

 for spending largely of their earnings in buying 

 delicate food — poultry and salmon, and peas and 

 strawberries. For my part, I am inclined to re- 

 joice if they can content themselves with such 

 harmless gratifications of the palate, instead of 

 the deadly stimulants of drink, cruelty, and vice. 



These, then, are the localities wherein wife- 

 torture flourishes in England ; where a dense pop- 

 ulation is crowded into a hideous manufacturing, 

 or mining, or mercantile district. Wages are usu- 

 ally high, though fluctuating. Facilities for drink 

 and vice abound, but those for cleanliness and 

 decency are scarcely attainable. The men are 

 rude, coarse, and brutal, in their manners and 

 habits, and the women devoid, in an extraordi- 

 nary degree, of all the higher natural attractions 

 and influences of their sex. Poor drudges of the 

 factory, or of the crowded and sordid lodging- 

 house, they lose, before youth is past, the fresh- 

 ness, neatness, and gentleness, perhaps even the 

 modesty of a woman, and present, when their mis- 

 erable cases come up before the magistrate, an as- 

 pect so sordid and forbidding that it is no doubt 

 with difficulty he affords his sympathy to them 

 rather than to the husband chained to so wretch- 

 ed a consort. Throughout the whole of this in- 

 quiry I think it very necessary, in justice to all 

 parties, and in mitigation of too vehement judg. 

 ment of cases only known from printed reports, 

 to bear in mind that the women of the class con- 

 cerned are, some of them, wofully unwomanly, 



