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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



who was beaten by her husband till she became 

 insensible, had long provided for him and herself 

 by charwork ; and so on. 



Regarding the extent of the evil it is difficult 

 to arrive at a just calculation. Speaking of those 

 cases only which come before the courts — proba- 

 bly, of course, not a third of the whole number — 

 the elements for forming an opinion are the fol- 

 lowing : 



In the judicial statistics for England and 

 Wales, issued in 1877 for 1876, we find that of 

 aggravated assaults on women and children, of 

 the class which since 1853 have been brought un- 

 der summary jurisdiction, there were reported — 



Inl876 2,737 



In 1875 3,106 



In 1874 2,841 



How many of these were assaults made by hus- 

 bands on wives there is no means of distinguish- 

 ing, but, judging from other sources, 1 I should 

 imagine they formed about four-fifths of the whole. 



Among the worst cases, when the accused 

 persons were committed for trial or bailed for 

 appearance at assizes or sessions (coming under 

 the head of criminal proceedings), the classifica- 

 tion adopted in the Parliamentary Return does 

 not permit of identifying the cases which con- 

 cerned women only. Some rough guess on the 

 matter may perhaps be formed from the prepon- 

 derance of male criminals in all classes of violent 

 crime. Out of 67 persons charged with murder 

 in 1876, 49 were men. Of 41 charged with at- 

 tempt to murder, 35 were males. Of 157 charged 

 with shooting, stabbing, etc., 146 were men. Of 

 232 charged with manslaughter, 185 were men ; 

 and, of 1,020 charged with assault inflicting bodily 

 harm, 857 were men. In short, out of 1,517 per- 

 sons charged with crimes of cruelty and violence, 

 more than five-sixths were males, and only 235 

 females. Of course the men's offenses include a 

 variety of crimes besides wife-beating and wife- 

 torture. 



The details of the crimes for which twenty-two 

 men who were capitally convicted in 1876 suffered 

 death are noteworthy on this head. (" Criminal 

 Statistics," p. xxix.) Of these — 



Edward Deacon, shoemaker, murdered his wife 

 by cutting her head with a chopper. 



1 E. g., the Report of the Society for the Protection 

 of Women and Children, which has this significant pas- 

 sage: "Some of the cases of assaults were of a brutal 

 and aggravated character. . . . thirty-three hy hus- 

 bands on wives, five by fathers, and four by mothers 

 on their children." 



' John Thomas Green, painter, shot his wife with 

 a pistol. 



John Eblethrift, laborer, murdered his wife by 

 j stabbing. 



Charles O'Donnell, laborer, murdered his wife 

 by beating. 



Henry Webster, laborer, murdered his wife by 

 cutting her throat. 



Besides these, five others murdered women 

 with whom they were living in vicious relations, 

 and three others (including the monster William 

 Fish) murdered children. In all, more than half 

 the convicted persons executed that year were 

 guilty of wife-murder — or of what we may term 

 ^Masi-wife-mu rder. 



A source of more accurate information is to 

 be found in the abstracts of the reports of chief 

 constables for the years 1870-'74, presented to 

 the Home Secretary, and published in the " Re- 

 port on Brutal Assaults" (p. 169, et seq.). In 

 this instructive table brutal assaults on women 

 are discriminated from those on men, and the to- 

 tal number of convictions for such assaults for 

 the whole five years is 6,029 ; or at the average 

 of 1,205 per annum. This is, however, obviously 

 an imperfect return. In Nottinghamshire, where 

 such offenses were notoriously common, the doings 

 of the " Lambs " have somehow escaped enumera- 

 tion. " The chief constable states that he is un- 

 able to furnish a correct return." From Merio- 

 nethshire no report was received in reply to the 

 Home Office circular; and from Rutland, Salop, 

 Radnor, and Cardiganshire, the chief constables 

 returned the reply that there were no brutal as- 

 saults in those counties during the five years in 

 question — a statement suggesting that some dif- 

 ferent classification of offenses must prevail in 

 those localities, since the immunity of Cardigan- 

 shire and Salop for five years from such crimes 

 of violence would be little short of miraculous, 

 while Flint alone had sixteen convictions. Thus 

 I conceive that we may fairly estimate the num- 

 ber of brutal assaults (brutal be it remembered, 

 not ordinary), committed on women in England 

 and Wales and actually brought to justice, at 

 about 1,500 a year, or more than £ovly per diem ; 

 and of these the great majority are of husbands 

 on wives. 



Let us now proceed from the number to the 

 nature of the offenses in question. I have called 

 this paper English wife-torture because I wish to 

 impress my readers with the fact that the familiar 

 term "wife-beating" conveys about as remote a 

 notion of the extremity of the cruelty indicated 

 as when candid and ingenuous vivisectors talk of 



