51 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



Were women to obtain the franchise to-mor- 

 row, it is morally certain that a Bill for the Pro- 

 tection of Wives would pass through the Legisla- 

 ture before a session was over. I have yet hopes 

 that, even before that event takes place, some 

 attention may be directed to the miserable sub- 

 ject, and that it may be possible to obtain some 

 measure, holding out a prospect of relief to the 

 wretched victims — if not of repression of the 

 crime of wife-torture. What measure ou<rht we 



O 



to ask for the purpose ? 



Of the desirability that any step should be 

 taken in the direction of inflicting the lash for 

 aggravated assaults on women, I shall not pre- 

 sume in the face of such authorities as have been 

 cited above to offer any opinion whatever. 



One thing is manifest, at all events. It is, 

 that, if flogging were added to the present penal- 

 ties of wife-beating, the great difficulty which 

 meets all efforts to stop the practice would be 

 doubled. That difficulty is the inducing of the 

 women (whose evidence is in most instances in- 

 dispensable) to bear testimony against their hus- 

 bands. It is hard enough to lead them to do so 

 when the results will be an imprisonment to end in 

 one month or in six, after which the husband will 

 return to them full of fresh and more vindictive 

 cruelty, and when in short, bringing him " up " 

 means abandoning the last ray of hope of ever 

 making a happy home. This sentiment, half pru- 

 dence, half perhaps, in some cases, lingering af- 

 fection, cannot be overcome (even were it desir- 

 able to do so), as the law now stands, and causes 

 endless failures of justice and perplexity to the 

 always well-meaning magistrates. As a general 

 rule, it is said the wives will often tell their sto- 

 ries to the constables at the moment of the ar- 

 rest, and can frequently be induced to attend in 

 court the day or two after their injuries, and 

 while still smarting from their blows, and kicks, 

 and " cloggings." But if a week be allowed to 

 elapse, still more if the case be referred to the 

 Quarter Sessions or Assizes, the wife is almost 

 certain in the interval to have relented, or to have 

 learned to dread the consequence of bearing tes- 

 timony, and, instead of telling her true story, is 

 constantly found to narrate some poor little fable 

 whereby the husband is quite exonerated, and 

 perhaps the blame taken on herself, as in the 

 pitifully ludicrous case cited by Colonel Egerton 

 Leigh in the House of Commons of the woman 

 who appeared without a nose, and told the magis- 

 trate she had bitten it off herself ! On this sub- 

 ject, and on the defects of our whole procedure 

 in such cases, some just remarks were made by 



Mr. Sergeant Pulling in a paper read before the 

 Social Science Congress at Liverpool, published in 

 the " Transactions " for \%1§, p. 345. He says : 



" No one who has gained experience of wife- 

 beating cases can doubt that our present system 

 of procedure seems as if it were designed not to 

 repress crime, but to discourage complaints. A 

 woman after being brutally assaulted by her hus- 

 band, and receiving a sufficient number of kicks 

 and blows to make her think she is being mur- 

 dered, calls out for the aid of the police ; and, if 

 her statements were there and then authentically 

 recorded, and afterward, on the commitment and 

 trial of the aggressor, allowed to form part of the 

 formal proof against him (subject, of course, to the 

 right of the accused to refute it by cross-examina- 

 tion), there can be little doubt that the ends of 

 justice would oftener be attained. In practice, 

 however, the course is for the police to hear the 

 loose statements of the scared victim and by- 

 standers ; and the subsequent proceedings are left 

 very much to depend on the influences brought to 

 bear on the poor wife in the interim (before the 

 trial). She may relent before morning comes, or 

 be subjected to so much sinister influence on the 

 part of the husband and his friends as to be ef- 

 fectually prevented from disclosing the whole truth 

 at all ; or if doing so in the first stage of the pro- 

 ceedings she may be easily made so completely to 

 neutralize its effect that conviction becomes imprac- 

 ticable. The lesson taught to the ruffian is, that, 

 if he ill-uses his dog or his donkey, he stands a 

 fair chance of being duly prosecuted, convicted, 

 and punished ; but that, if the ill-usage is merely 

 practised on his wife, the odds are in favor of his 

 own entire immunity, and of his victim getting 

 worse treatment if she dare appear against him." 



To avoid these failures of justice, and the 

 consequent triumph of the callous offenders, 

 magistrates are generally very anxious to have 

 these cases summarily disposed of, and to strike 

 while the iron is hot. But, of course, there 

 hence arises another evil — namely, that the great- 

 er offenses, which ought to be tried in the higher 

 courts, and were intended to receive the heaviest 

 penalty which the law allows, are punished only 

 to the extent of the powers of the summary juris- 

 diction, of which the maximum is six months' 

 imprisonment. Occasionally there is reason to 

 believe the magistrates mend matters a little by 

 the not unfair device of ordering the offender to 

 find security for good behavior, which, as he is 

 generally unable to discover anybody foolish 

 enough to give it for him, involves his incarcera- 

 tion in jail, possibly for a year. And, again, 

 magistrates kindly endeavor to make the period 

 of detention serve the process of reclaiming the 

 man to better feelings about his wife by allowing 



