56 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



" 4. Every such order as aforesaid shall, within 

 ten days after the making thereof, be entered with 

 the registrar of the county court within whose 

 jurisdiction the wife is resident, and a copy of such 

 order shall, within such ten days, or within a rea- 

 sonable time in that behalf, be served upon the 

 husband. And it shall be lawful for the husband 

 to apply to the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial 

 Causes, or to the magistrate or justices by whom 

 such order was made, for the discharge thereof, 

 and they may (if they think fit) discharge the 

 same. And the said Court for Divorce and Matri- 

 monial Causes, or magistrate, or justices, is or are 

 hereby authorized to discharge such order if it, he, 

 or they, shall deem fit." 



(Here folloios schedule.) 



The reasons which may be urged on behalf of 

 this measure are manifold. They rest at all points 

 on admitted principles of legislation. 



In the first place, the divorce laws offering to 

 women who can avail themselves of (hem the rem- 

 edy of judicial separation in cases of the cruelty 

 of their husbands, it is a matter of simple justice 

 that the same remedy should be placed within the 

 reach of those poor women who are subjected to 

 tenfold greater cruelties than those which the 

 court always rules to constitute a ground for such 

 separation. It is impossible to imagine a matter 

 in which the existence of " one law for the rich 

 and another for the poor " is more unrighteous 

 and intolerable than this. At the same time, ex- 

 cept by some such machinery as has been sug- 

 gested — namely, that the police magistrate or 

 petty sessions court should be given the power 

 to pronounce the separation — it is difficult to 

 conceive of any way in which the very humble 

 and ignorant class of women, with whom we are 

 concerned, could ever obtain the decree which is, 

 in principle, at present their right. 



A second reason for such a measure is that, 

 as above stated, magistrates are already empow- 

 ered, in cases of desertion, to give " protection 

 orders," which are expressly stated to be (so far 

 as property is concerned) equivalent to a judicial 

 separation, and which (very frequently given as 

 they are) practically act as judicial separations in 

 all respects. The objection which has been raised 

 by some hasty readers of the bill, that it proposes 

 to give an unheard-of power to one or two mag- 

 istrates, thus falls to the ground. They already 

 practically exercise the same power every day in 

 the minor case of desertion. The husband is also 

 afforded by the bill every facility for obtaining a 

 discharge of the order should it appear to have 

 been unjustly given. 



Finally, a most important reason for adopting 



such a measure is, that it — or something like it 

 — is indispensable to induce the victims of such 

 outrages to apply for legal redress. 1 The great 

 failure of justice, which has so long gone on in 

 this matter, is chiefly due, as I have said before, 

 to the fact that the existing law discourages such 

 applications ; and in like manner must every pro- 

 jected law do so which merely adds penalties to 

 the husband's offense without providing the suf- 

 fering wife with any protection from his renewed 

 violence when that penalty has been endured. 

 Under the " Wives' Protection Bill," should it 

 become law, the injured wife would have the very 

 thing she really wants, namely, security against fur- 

 ther violence, coupled with the indispensable cus- 

 tody of her children (without which no protection 

 of herself would offer a temptation to the better 

 sort of women), and some small (though probably 

 precarious) contribution to their maintenance and 

 her own. With this real relief held out to them 

 by the law, I should have little doubt that we 

 should find the victims of brutal assaults and of 

 repeated aggravated assaults very generally com- 

 ing forward to bear testimony and claim their re- 

 lease, and the greatest difficulty attendant on the 

 case would be at an end. 



Even were there but a few who availed them- 

 selves of the boon, I still think it would be fitting 

 and right that the law should hold it out to them. 

 In many instances, no doubt, the mere fact that 

 the wife had such a resource open to her would 

 act very effectually on the husband as a deterrent 

 from violence. 



As to the justice and expediency of giving 

 the custody of the children (both boys and girls 

 of all ages) to the wife, there can be, I should 

 think, little hesitation. The man who is, ex hypo- 

 thesi, capable of kicking, maiming, and mutilat- 

 ing his wife, is even less fit to be the guardian 

 of the bodies and souls of children than the lord 

 and master of a woman. They are no more safe 

 under his roof than in the cage of a wild beast, 

 and the guilt of leaving them in the one place is 



1 Mr. W. Digby Seymour, Eecorder of Newcastle- 

 on-Tyne, in giving in his opinion on the desirability 

 of adding flogging to the penalties of wife-heating, 

 says : " If you flog the husband you will forever de- 

 grade him as a married man. Let him be flogged by 

 all means : but why not amend the laws of divorce, 

 and, in cases of a conviction for 'brutal violence,' en- 

 title the wife, on simple proof of conviction, to a di- 

 vorce a vinculo ? "— " Returns," p. 90. 



Mr. Lonsdale, Eecorder of Folkestone, says practi- 

 cally the same : " I would not authorize flogging in 

 cases of assaults upon wives unless that punishment 

 were allowed to have the effect of a judicial separa- 

 tion."— Ibid., p. 82. 



