ALWAYS THE “INJURED INNOCENT”!
While what we have termed Political Feminism vehemently asserts
its favourite dogma, the intellectual and moral equality of the
sexes—that the woman is as good as the man if not better—Sentimental
Feminism as vehemently seeks to exonerate every female criminal, and
protests against any punishment being meted out to her approaching
in severity that which would be awarded a man in a similar case. It
does so on grounds which presuppose the old theory of the immeasurable
inferiority, mental and moral, of woman, which are so indignantly
spurned by every Political Feminist—_i.e._ in his or her capacity as
such. We might suppose, therefore, that Political Feminism, with its
theory of sex equality based on the assumption of equal sex capacity,
would be in strong opposition in this matter with Sentimental Feminism,
which seeks, as its name implies, to attenuate female responsibility on
grounds which are not distinguishable from the old-fashioned assumption
of inferiority. But does Political Feminism consistently adopt this
logical position? Not one whit. It is quite true that some Feminists,
when hard pressed, may grudgingly concede the untenability on rational
grounds of the Sentimental Feminists’ claims. But taken as a whole, and
in their practical dealings, the Political Feminists are in accord with
the Sentimental Feminists in claiming female immunity on the ground of
sex. This is shown in every case where a female criminal receives more
than a nominal sentence.
We have already given examples of the fact in question, and they could
be indefinitely extended. At the end of the year 1911, at Birmingham,
in the case of a woman convicted of the murder of her paramour by
deliberately pouring inflammable oil over him while he was asleep,
and then setting it afire, and afterwards not only exulting in the
action but saying she was ready to do it again, the jury brought in
recommendation to mercy with their verdict. And, needless to say, the
influence of Political and Sentimental Feminism was too strong to allow
the capital sentence to be carried out, even with such a fiendish
wretch as this. In the case of the Italian woman in Canada, Napolitano,
before mentioned, the female franchise societies issued a petition
to Mr Borden, the Premier of Canada, in favour of the commutation of
sentence. The usual course was adopted in this case, as in most others
in which a woman murders a man—to wit, the truly “chivalrous” one of
trying to blacken the character of the dead victim in defence of the
action of the murderess. In other cases, more especially, of course,
where the man is guilty of a crime against a woman, when mercy is
asked for the offender, we are pitifully adjured to “think of the poor
victim.” As we have seen, Lord Haldane trotted out this exhortation in
a case where it was absurdly inappropriate, since the much-commiserated
“victim” had only herself to thank for being a “victim,” and still more
for remaining a “victim.” We never hear this plea for the “victim”
urged where the “victim” happens to be a man and the offender a woman.
Compare this with the case of the boy of nineteen, Beal, whom Mr
M‘Kenna hanged for the murder of his sweetheart, and that in the teeth
of an explanation given in the defence which was at least possible,
if not probable, and which certainly, putting it at the very lowest,
introduced an element of doubt into the case. Fancy a girl of nineteen
being convicted, whatever the evidence, of having poisoned her paramour
or even if, _per impossibile_, she were convicted, fancy her being
given more than a short term of imprisonment! A man murdered by a woman
is always the horrid brute, while the woman murdered by the man is just
as surely the angelic victim. Anyone who reads reports of cases with an
unbiassed mind must admit the absolute accuracy of this statement.
Divine woman is always the “injured innocent,” not only in the graver
crimes, such as murder, but also in the minor offences coming under the
cognisance of the law. At the Ledbury Petty Sessions a woman in the
employment of a draper, who had purloined goods to the amount of £150,
was acquitted on the ground of “kleptomania,” and this notwithstanding
the fact that she had been in the employment of the prosecutor for over
five years, had never complained of illness and had never been absent
from business; also that her landlady gave evidence showing that she
was sound in mind and body. At the very same sessions two men were
sentenced respectively to eight and twelve months’ imprisonment for
stealing goods to the value of £5! (_John Bull_, 12th November 1910).
At this point I may be permitted to quote from the article formerly
alluded to (_Fortnightly Review_, November 1911, case taken from a
report in _The News of the World_ of 28th February 1909): “A young
woman shot at the local postman with a revolver; the bullet grazed his
face, she having fired point blank at his head. Jury returned a verdict
of not guilty, although the revolver was found on her when arrested,
and the facts were admitted and were as follows:—At noon she left her
house, crossing three fields to the house of the victim, who was at
home and alone; upon his appearing she fired point blank at his head;
he banged to the door, and thus turned off the bullet, which grazed
his face and ‘ploughed a furrow through his hair.’ She had by her when
arrested a revolver cocked and with four chambers undischarged.”
Let us now take the crime of violent assault with attempt to do bodily
injury. The following cases will serve as illustrative examples:—From
_The News of the World_, 9th May 1909: A nurse in Belfast sued her lost
swain for breach of promise. _She obtained £100 damages although it was
admitted by her counsel that she had thrown vitriol over the defendant,
thereby injuring him, and the defendant had not prosecuted her!_ Also
it was admitted that she had been “carrying on” with another man.
From _The Morning Leader_ of 8th July 1905 I have taken the following
extraordinary facts as to the varied punishment awarded in cases of
vitriol-throwing: That of a woman who threw vitriol over a sergeant at
Aldershot, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment without hard
labour while a man who threw it over a woman at Portsmouth was tried
and convicted at the Hants Assizes, on 7th July 1905, and sentenced
by Mr Justice Bigham to twelve years’ penal servitude! As regards the
first case it will be observed that, (notwithstanding a crime, which in
the case of a man was described by the judge as “cowardly and vile”
and meriting twelve years’ penal servitude) the woman was rewarded by
damages for £100, to be obtained from the very victim whom she had done
her best to maim for life (besides being unfaithful to him) and who had
generously abstained from prosecuting.
But it is not merely in cases of murder, attempted murder or serious
assault that justice is mocked by the present state of our law and its
administration in the interests of the female sex. The same attitude is
observed, the same farcical sentences on women, whether the crime be
theft, fraud, common assault, criminal slander or other minor offences.
We have the same preposterous excuses admitted, the same preposterous
pleas allowed, and the same farcical sentences passed—if, indeed, any
sentence be passed at all. The following examples I have culled at
random:—From _John Bull_, 26th February 1910: At the London Sessions,
Mr Robert Wallace had to deal with the case of a well-dressed woman
living at Hampstead, who pleaded guilty to obtaining goods to the
amount of £50 by false pretences. In explanation of her crime it was
stated that she was under a mistaken impression that her engagement
would not lead to marriage, that she became depressed, and that she
“did not know what she said or did,” while in mitigation of punishment
it was urged that the money had been repaid, that her fiancé could
not marry her if she were sent to gaol, and that her life would be
irretrievably ruined, and she was discharged! From _The Birmingham
Post_, 4th February 1902: A female clerk (twenty-six) pleaded guilty to
embezzling £5, 1s. 9d. on 16th November, £2, 2s. 4d. on 21st December
and £5, 0s. 9d. on 23rd December last, the moneys of her employer.
Prosecuting counsel said prisoner entered prosecutor’s employ in
1900, and in June last her salary was raised to 27s. 6d. a week. The
defalcations, which began a month before the increase, amounted to
£134. She had falsified the books, and when suspicion fell upon her
destroyed two books, in order, as she thought, to prevent detection.
Her counsel pleaded for leniency on the ground of her previous good
character _and because she was engaged_! The recorder merely bound her
over, stating that her parents and young man were respectable, and so
was the house in which she lodged! A correspondent mentions in _The
Birmingham Post_ of February 1902 a case where a woman had burned her
employer’s outhouses and property, doing £1800 worth of damage, and got
off with a month’s imprisonment. On the other hand, the _same_ judge,
at the _same_ Quarter Sessions, thus dealt with two male embezzlers:
C. C. (twenty-eight), clerk, who pleaded guilty to embezzling two sums
of money from his master in August and September of 1901 (amounts
not given), was sent to gaol for six calendar months; and S. G.
(twenty-four), clerk, pleaded guilty to embezzling 7s. 6d. and 3s. For
the defence it was urged that the prisoner had been poorly paid, and
the recorder, hearing that a gentleman was prepared to employ the man
as soon as released, sentenced him to three months’ hard labour! O
merciful recorder!
The “injured innocent” theory usually comes into play with magistrates
when a woman is charged with aggravated annoyance and harassing of
men in their business or profession, when, as already stated, the
administrator of the law will usually tell the prosecutor that he
cannot interfere. In the opposite case of a man annoying a woman under
like circumstances he invariably has to find substantial sureties for
his good behaviour or go to gaol. No injured innocence for him!
There is another case in which it seems probable that, animated by
the same fixed idea, those responsible for the framing of laws have
flagrantly neglected an obvious measure for public safety. We refer to
the unrestricted sale of sulphuric acid (vitriol) which is permitted.
Now here we have a substance subserving only very special purposes
in industry, none in household economy, or in other departments,
save for criminal ends, which is nevertheless procurable without let
or hindrance. Is it possible to believe that this would be the case
if men were in the habit of using this substance in settling their
differences with each other, even still more if they employed it by way
of emphasising their disapproval of the jilting of sweethearts? That it
should be employed by women in wreaking their vengeance on recalcitrant
lovers seems a natural if not precisely a commendable action, in the
eyes of a Sentimental Feminist public opinion, and one which, on the
mildest hypothesis, “doesn’t matter.” Hence a deadly substance may be
freely bought and sold as though it were cod-liver oil. A very nice
thing for dastardly viragoes for whom public opinion has only the
mildest of censures! In any reasonable society the indiscriminate sale
of corrosive substances would in itself be a crime punishable with a
heavy term of imprisonment.
It is not only by men, and by a morbid public opinion inflamed by
Feminist sentiment in general, that female criminals are surrounded
by a halo of injured innocence. The reader can hardly fail to notice
that such women have the effrontery to pretend to regard themselves in
this light. This is often so in cases of assault, murder or attempted
murder of lovers by their sweethearts. Such is, of course, particularly
noticeable in the senselessly wicked outrages, of which more anon.
The late Otto Weininger, in his book before quoted, “Geschlecht und
Charakter” (Sex and Character), has some noteworthy remarks on this,
remarks which, whether we accept his suggested theory or not, might
well have been written as a comment on recent cases of suffragette
crimes and criminals. “The male criminal,” says Weininger, “has from
his birth the same relation to the idea of value [moral value] as any
other man in whom the criminal tendencies governing himself may be
wholly absent. The female on the other hand often claims to be fully
justified when she has committed the greatest conceivable infamy. While
the genuine criminal is obtusely silent against all reproaches, a woman
will express her astonishment and indignation that anyone can doubt
her perfect right to act as she has done. Women are convinced of their
being in the right without ever having sat in judgment on themselves.
The male criminal, it may be true, does not do so either, but then he
never maintains that he is in the right. He rather goes hastily out
of the way of discussing right and wrong, because it reminds him of
his guilt. In this fact we have a proof that he has a relationship to
the [moral] idea, and that it is unfaithfulness to his better self
of which he is unwilling to be reminded. No male criminal has ever
really believed that injustice has been done him by punishment. The
female criminal on the other hand is convinced of the maliciousness
of her accusers, and if she is unwilling no man can persuade her that
she has done wrong. Should someone admonish her, it is true that she
often bursts into tears, begs for forgiveness and admits her fault;
she may even believe indeed that she really feels this fault. Such is
only the case, however, when she has felt inclined to do so, for this
very dissolving in tears affects her always with a certain voluptuous
pleasure. The male criminal is obstinate, he does not allow himself
to be turned round in a moment as the apparent defiance of a woman
may be converted into an apparent sense of guilt, where, that is, the
accuser understands how to handle her” (“Geschlecht und Charakter,”
pp. 253-254). Weininger’s conclusion is: “Not that woman is naturally
evil or _anti_-moral, but rather that she is merely _a_-moral, in other
words that she is destitute of what is commonly called ‘moral sense.’”
The cases of female penitents and others which seem to contradict this
announcement Weininger explains by the hypothesis that “it is only in
company and under external influence that woman can feel remorse.”
Be all this as it may, the fact remains that women when most patently
and obviously guilty of vile and criminal actions will, with the most
complete nonchalance, insist that they are in the right. This may be,
and very possibly often is, mere impudent effrontery, relying on the
privilege of the female sex, or it may, in part at least, as Weininger
insists, be traceable to “special deep-lying sex-characteristics.” But
in any case the singular fact is that men, and men even of otherwise
judicial capacity, are to be found who are prepared virtually to accept
the justice of this attitude, and who are ready to condone, if not
directly to defend, any conduct, no matter how vile or how criminal, on
the part of a woman. We have illustrations of this class of judgment
almost every day, but I propose to give two instances of what I should
deem typical, if slightly extreme, perversions of moral judgment on
the part of two men, both of them of social and intellectual standing,
and without any doubt personally of the highest integrity. Dr James
Donaldson, Principal of the University of St Andrews, in his work
entitled “Woman, her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and
Rome and among the Early Christians,” commenting on the well-known
story attributed to the year 331 B.C., which may or may not
be historical, of the wholesale poisoning of their husbands by Roman
matrons, as well as of subsequent cases of the same crime, concludes
his remarks with these words: “It seems to me that we must regard them
[namely these stories or facts, as we may choose to consider them] as
indicating that the Roman matrons felt sometimes that they were badly
treated, that they ought not to endure the bad treatment, and that
they ought to take the only means that they possessed of expressing
their feelings, and of wreaking vengeance, by employing poison” (p.
92). Now though it may be said that in this passage we have no direct
justification of the atrocious crime attributed to the Roman matrons,
yet it can hardly be denied that we have here a distinct condonation
of the infamous and dastardly act, such a condonation as the worthy
Principal of St Andrews University would hardly have meted out to men
under any circumstances. Probably Professor Donaldson, in writing the
above, felt that his comments would not be resented very strongly, even
if not actually approved, by public opinion, steeped as it is at the
present time in Feminism, political and sentimental.
Another instance, this time of direct special pleading to prove a woman
guilty of an atrocious crime to be an “injured innocent.” It is taken
from an eminent Swiss alienist in his work on Sex. Dr Forel maintains
a thesis which may or may not be true to the effect that the natural
maternal instinct is either absent or materially weakened in the case
of a woman who has given birth to a child begotten by rape, or under
circumstances bordering upon rape, and indeed more or less in all
cases where the woman is an unwilling participant in the sexual act.
By way of illustration of this theory he cites the case of a barmaid
in St Gallen who was seduced by her employer under such circumstances
as those above mentioned; a child resulted, who was put out to nurse
at an institution until five years of age, when it was handed over to
the care of the mother. Now what does the woman do? Within a few hours
of receiving the little boy into her keeping she took him to a lonely
place and deliberately strangled him, in consequence of which she was
tried and condemned. Now Dr Forel, in his Feminist zeal, feels it
incumbent upon him to try to whitewash this female monster by urging,
on the basis of this theory, the excuse that under the circumstances
of its conception one could not expect the mother to have the ordinary
instincts of maternity as regards her child. The worthy doctor is
apparently so blinded by his Feminist prejudices that (quite apart
from the correctness or otherwise of his theory) he is oblivious of
the absurd irrelevancy of his argument. What, we may justly ask, has
the maternal instinct, or its absence, to do with the guilt of the
murderess of a helpless child committed to her care? Who or what the
child was is immaterial! That a humane and otherwise clear-headed
man like Dr Forel could take a wretch of this description under his
_ægis_, and still more that in doing so he should serve up such utterly
illogical balderdash by way of argument, is only one more instance of
how the most sane-thinking men are rendered fatuous by the glamour of
Sentimental Feminism.
In the present chapter we have given a few typical instances of the
practice which constitutes one of the most conspicuous features of
Modern Feminism and of the public opinion which it has engendered.
We hear and read, _ad nauseam_, of excuses, and condonation, for
every crime committed by a woman, while a crime of precisely similar
a character and under precisely similar circumstances, where a man
is the perpetrator, meets with nothing but virulent execration from
that truculent ass, British public opinion, as manipulated by the
Feminist fraternity, male and female. This state of public opinion
reacts, of course, upon the tribunals and has the result that women
are practically free to commit any offence they please, with always
a splendid sporting chance of getting acquitted altogether, and a
practical certainty that even if convicted they will receive farcical
sentences, or, should the sentence be in any degree adequate to the
offence, that such sentence will not be carried out. The way in which
criminal law is made a jest and a mockery as regards female prisoners,
the treatment of criminal suffragettes, is there in evidence. The
excuse of health being endangered by their going without their
breakfasts has resulted in the release after a few days of women guilty
of the vilest crimes—_e.g._ the attempt to set fire to the theatre at
Dublin. It may be well to recall the outrageous facts of modern female
immunity and free defiance of the law as illustrated by one quotation
of a description of the merry time of the window-smashers of March 1912
in Holloway prison given by a correspondent of _The Daily Telegraph_.
The correspondent of that journal describes his visit to the aforesaid
prison, where he said there appeared to have been no punishment of any
kind for any sort of misbehaviour. “All over the place,” he writes,
“is noise—women calling to women everywhere, and the officials seem
powerless to preserve even the semblance of discipline. A suffragist
will call out her name while in a cell, and another one who knows her
will answer, giving her name in return, and a conversation will then
be carried on between the two. This chattering obtains all day and far
into the night. The ‘officials’ as the wardresses prefer themselves
called, have already given the prison the name of ‘the monkey-house.’
Certain it is that the prisoners are treated with all deference, the
reason being perhaps that the number of officials is insufficient to
establish proper order. While I was waiting yesterday one lady drove up
in a carriage and pair, in which were two policemen and several bundles
of clothes, to enter upon her sentence and this is the note which seems
to dominate the whole of the prison. Seventy-six of the prisoners
are supposed to be serving sentences with hard labour, but none of
them are wearing prison clothes, and in only one or two instances
have any tasks of any description been given, those generally being
a little sewing or knitting.” Again a member of the Women’s Freedom
League at a meeting on 19th May 1912 boasted that the suffragettes had
a wing of their own at Holloway. “They had nice hot water pipes and
all the latest improvements and were able to climb up to the window
and exchange sentiments with their friends.” She had saved money and
enjoyed herself very much!!
Here we have a picture of the way the modern authorities of the law
recognise the “injured innocence” of female delinquents who claim the
right wantonly to destroy property. Our present society, based as it is
on private property-holding, and which usually punished with the utmost
severity any breach of the sanctity of private property, waives its
claims where women are concerned. Similarly arson under circumstances
directly endangering human life, for which the law prescribes the
maximum sentence of penal servitude for life, is considered adequately
punished by a week or two’s imprisonment when those convicted of the
crime are of the female sex. Oh, but they were acting from political
motives! Good, and have not terrorist anarchists, Fenians and Irish
dynamiters of the Land League days also acted from political motives?
The terrorist anarchist, foolish and indefensible though his tactics
may be, believes honestly enough that he is paving the way for the
abolition of poverty, misery and social injustice, a far more vital
thing than the franchise! The Irish Fenians and dynamiters pursued a
similar policy and there is no reason to doubt their honest belief that
it would further the cause of the freedom and national independence
of Ireland. Yet were these “political” offenders dealt with otherwise
than as ordinary criminals when convicted of acts qualified by the law
as felonies? And their acts, moreover, whatever we may think of them
otherwise, were, in most cases at least, politically logical from their
own point of view, and not senseless injuries to unoffending persons,
as those of the present-day female seekers after the suffrage.