Commons; but the fates and hours were propitious, and the Bill, coming
in late one night as already passed by the House of Lords and with Lord
Penzance’s great name on it,—escaped opposition and was accepted without
debate. By the 27th May, 1878, it had become the law of the land, and
has since taken its place as Chapter 19 of the 41st Vict. _An Act to
amend the Matrimonial Causes Acts._ The following are the clauses which
concern the assaulted Wives:—
4. If a husband shall be convicted summarily or otherwise of an
aggravated assault within the meaning of the statute twenty-fourth and
twenty-fifth Victoria, chapter one hundred, section forty-three, upon
his wife, the Court or magistrate before whom he shall be so convicted
may, if satisfied that the future safety of the wife is in peril,
order that the wife shall be no longer bound to cohabit with her
husband; and such order shall have the force and effect in all
respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty;
and such order may further provide,
1. That the husband shall pay to his wife such weekly sum as the Court
or magistrate may consider to be in accordance with his means, and
with any means which the wife may have for her support, and the
payment of any sum of money so ordered shall be enforceable and
enforced against the husband in the same manner as the payment of
money is enforced under an order of affiliation; and the Court or
magistrate by whom any such order for payment of money shall be made
shall have power from time to time to vary the same on the
application of either the husband or the wife, upon proof that the
means of the husband or wife have been altered in amount since the
original order or any subsequent order varying it shall have been
made.
2. That the legal custody of any children of the marriage under the
age of ten years shall, in the discretion of the Court or
magistrate, be given to the wife.
At first the magistrates were very chary of granting the Separation
Orders. One London Police Magistrate had said that the House of Commons
would never put such power in the hands of one of the body, and he was,
I suppose, proportionately startled when just six weeks later, it
actually lay in his own. By degrees, however, the practice of granting
the Orders on proper occasions became common, and appears now to be
almost a matter of course. I hope that at least a hundred poor souls
each year thus obtain release from their tormentors, and probably the
deterrent effect of witnessing such manumission of ill-treated slaves
may have still more largely served to protect women from the violence of
brutal husbands.
Six years after the Act had passed in 1884, I received a letter from a
very energetic and prominent woman-worker with whom I had a slight
acquaintance, in which the following passages occur. I quote them here
(though with some hesitation on the score of vanity) for they have
comforted me much and deeply, and will do so to my life’s end.
“On Wednesday last I was two hours with a widow,—of O——, near W——; one
of those persons who _make_ a country so good, brave, loving and
hardworking! For 33 long years she lived with a fiend of a husband,
and suffered furious blows, kicks, and attacks with ropes, hot water,
and crockery; was hurled down cellar-steps, &c., starved and insulted.
All the time, up early and at work managing a large shop and
superintending 35 girls....
“I wish you could have been there to hear her tell me that ‘the law
was altered now,’ and how her niece had got a separation for brutal
treatment; and (best of all) ‘her two bairns’ (children). As for the
8s. a week ordered,—the wife never ‘bothers after that.’ ‘The Lord has
stopped that villain’s ways, and she wants no more.’ I could not help
crying, as I looked at the exquisitely clean person and home,—the
determined face, and thought of the diabolical horrors this good,
clever woman had gone through. I told her how you had got the law
altered—and she kept saying ‘She’s a lady—she’s a lady. Bring her to
O——, Missis! and we’ll _percession_ her down t’ street!’...
“You have love and gratitude from our hearts, I assure you; we live
wider lives and better for your presence. I have ventured to write
freely on a subject some would find wearisome, but your heart is big
and will sympathise; and I am always longing for you to know the
active result of your achieved work. This! that poor battered, bruised
women are relieved—are safer—and bless you, and so do I, from a full
heart.
“I am, dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours faithfully,
“A. S.”
If I could hear before I die that I had been able to do as much for
tortured brutes, I should say “_Nunc Dimittis_,” and wish no more.
Some time after this (I have kept no copy or record of date) I delivered
a Lecture, which was a good deal noticed at the time, on the _Little
Health of Ladies_. It was an exposure of the evils resulting to families
from the state of semi-invalidism in which so many women live, usually
gently lapped therein by interested advisers. I exhorted women to do, as
a duty to God and man, everything possible to avoid falling into this
wretched condition, with the self-indulgence and neglect of home and
social duties leading to it or consequent on it. I did not then know as
much as I subsequently learned of the inner history of a great deal of
this misery, or I might have added to my warning some remarkable
denunciations by honourable doctors of the practices of their
colleagues.[32]
A singular incident followed the publication of this address in one of
the Magazines.
There was a lady, whose husband was a wealthy manufacturer in the North
of England, who came to London once or twice a year, and for several
years called on me; having much sympathy with my various interests. She
appeared to be a confirmed invalid, crawling with great difficulty out
of her carriage into our dining-room, and lying on a sofa during her
visits. One day I was told she had come, and I was hastening to receive
her downstairs, when a tall, elegant woman, whom I scarcely recognized,
walked firmly and lightly, into my drawing-room, and greeted me
cordially with laughter in her eyes at my astonishment.
“So glad to see you so well!” I exclaimed, “but what has happened to
you?”
“It is _you_ who have effected the cure!” she answered.
“Good gracious! How?”
“Why, I read your _Little Health of Ladies_, and I resolved to set my
doctor at naught and go about like other people. And you see how well I
am! There was really nothing the matter with me but want of exercise!”
I saw her several times afterwards in good health; and once she brought
me a beautiful gold bracelet with clasp of diamonds set in black enamel,
which she had had made for me, and which she forced me to accept as a
token of her gratitude. I am fond of wearing it still.
Another incident strongly confirmed my belief in the source of much of
the evil and misery arising from the _Little Health of Ladies_.
Travelling one day from Brighton I fell into conversation with a
nice-looking, well-bred woman the only other occupant of the railway
carriage. Speaking of the salubrity of Brighton, she said, “I am sure I
have reason enough to bless it. I was for fourteen years a miserable
invalid on my sofa in London; my doctor telling me I must never go out
or move. At last I said to my husband, ‘It is better to die than to go
on thus;’ and, in defiance of our Doctor, he brought me away to
Brighton, and there I soon grew, as you see, quite strong; and—and,—I
must tell you, _I have a little baby_, and my husband is so happy!”
That clever Gynæcologist lost, I daresay, a hundred, or perhaps two
hundred, a year by the escape of his patient from his assiduous
visitations; but the lady gained health and happiness; her husband his
wife’s companionship; and both of them a child! How much of the miseries
and ill-health, and, in many cases, death of women (of the poorer
classes especially) lies at the door of medical practitioners and
operators, too fond by half of the knife, is known to those who have
read the recent articles and correspondence respecting the Women’s
Hospitals and “Human Vivisection” therein in the _Daily Chronicle_ (May,
1894) and in the _Homœopathic World_ for June.
Quite apart from the doctors, however, a great deal of the sickliness of
women is undoubtedly due to wretched fashions of tight-lacing, and
wearing long and heavy skirts, and tight, thin boots, which render free
exercise of their limbs impossible. Nothing makes me really despair of
my sex, except looking at fashion-plates; or seeing (what is much worse
still, being wicked, as well as foolish) the adornments so many women
use of dead birds, stuck on their empty heads and heartless breasts.
These things are a disgrace to women for which I have often felt they
_deserve_ to be despised and swept aside by men as soulless creatures
unworthy of freedom. But alas! it is precisely the women who adopt these
idiotic fashions in dress, and wear (abominable cruelty!) Egrets as
ornaments, who are _not_ despised but admired by men, who reserve their
indifference and contempt for their homely and sensible sisters. Men in
these respects are as silly as the fish in the river caught by a gaudy
artificial fly on a hook, or enticed into a net by a scrap of scarlet
cloth, and a glittering morsel of brass. I often wonder whether women
are generally, as little capable of forming a discriminating judgment of
men?
Lastly, there is a cause of female ill-health which always impresses me
with profoundest pity, and which has never, I think, been fairly brought
to the front as the origin of a large part of feminine feebleness. I
mean the common want, among women who earn their livelihood, of
sufficiently brain-nourishing and stimulating food. Let any man, the
strongest in the land in body and mind, subsist for one week on tea
without milk, and bread and butter, and at the end of that time, he
will, I venture to predict, have lost half his superiority. His nervous
excitability and cheerfulness may remain, or even be enhanced, but the
faculty of largely grasping and strongly dealing with the subjects
presented to him, and of doing thorough and complete work, nay even the
_desire_ of such perfection and finish, will have abated; and the fatal
_slovenliness_ of women’s work will probably have begun to show itself.
The physical conditions under which the human spirit can alone (in this
life) carry out its purpose and attain its maximum of vigour, are more
or less lacking to half the women even in our country; and almost
completely wanting to the poor prisoners of the Zenanas of India and the
cripples of China. Exercise in the open air, wholesome and sufficient
food, plenty of sleep at night,—every one of these _sine qua non_
elements of real Health of Mind, as well as of Body, are out of reach of
one woman out of every two; yet we remark, curiously, on the inferiority
of their work! It is a vicious circle in which they are caught. They
take lower wages because they can live more cheaply than men; and they
necessarily live on those low wages too poorly to do anything but poor
work;—and again their wages are paltry because their work is so poor!
I confess, however, that—on the other hand—the spectacle of feminine
feebleness and futility when (as continually happens) it is exhibited
without the smallest excuse from inadequate food supply, is
indescribably irritating, nay, to me, humiliating and exasperating.
Watch (for example of what I mean by “feminine futility”) a woman asked
to open a just-arrived box, or a bottle of champagne or of soda-water.
She has been given a cold-chisel for opening the box, and a hammer; but
they are invariably “astray” when required, or she does not think it
worth while to fetch them from up or downstairs, so she kneels down
before the box and begins by fumbling with her fingers at the knots in
the cord. After five minutes’ efforts and broken nails, she gives this
up in despair, and “thinks she must cut it.” But how? She never by any
chance has a knife in her pocket; so she first tries her scissors, which
she _does_ keep there, but which, being always quite blunt, fail to
sever the rope; and then she fetches a dinner-knife, and gives one
cut,—when the feminine passion for economy suggests to her that she can
save the rest of the cord by pushing it (with immense effort) an inch or
two along the box, first at one side and then at the other. Then she
hopes by breaking open the top of the box at one end only, to get out
the contents without dealing further with the recalcitrant rope; and she
endeavours to pull it open where the nails seem least firm. Alas! those
nails will never yield to her weak hands; so her scissors are in
requisition again, and being inserted and used as a wedge, immediately
break off at the points, and are hastily withdrawn with an exclamation
of agonising regret for the blunt, but precious, instrument. Something
must be thrust in, however, to prize open the box. The cold-chisel and
hammer having been at last sought, but sought in vain, the kitchen
cleaver, covered with the fat of the last joint it has cut, is brought
into play; or, happy thought! she knows where her master keeps a fine
sharp chisel, and this is pushed in,—of course against a nail which
breaks the edge and makes it useless for ever. The poker serves
sufficiently well as a hammer to knock in the chisel, or the cleaver,
and to bang up the protruding lid of the box; and at last one plank of
the top is loosened, and she tears it off triumphantly, with a cry of
rejoicing: “There! Now, we shall get at everything in the box!” The
goods, however, stubbornly refuse to be extricated through the hole on
any terms; and eventually all the planks have to be successively broken
up, and the long-cared-for cord (for the preservation of which so much
trouble has been undergone) is cut into little pieces of a foot or two
in length, each attached to a hopelessly entangled knot, while the box
itself is entirely wrecked.
The case of the soda-water, or champagne bottle is worse again; so much
so that experience warns the wise to forbear from calling for
effervescent drinks where parlour-maids prevail. The preliminary
ineffectual attempt to loosen the wires with the fingers (the proper
pliers being, of course, missing); the resort to a steel carving-fork to
open them, and, in default of the steel fork, to a silver one, which is,
of course, bent immediately; the endeavour to cut the hempen cord with
the bread knife with the result of blunting that tool against the wire;
the struggle to cause the cork to fly by wobbling it with the right
hand, while clasping the neck of the bottle till it and the contents are
hot in the left; then (on the failure of this bold attempt) the cutting
off the head of the cork with a carving knife, and at the same time a
small slice of the operator’s hand, which, of course, bleeds profusely;
the consequent hasty transference of the bottle and the job to a second
attendant; the hurried search of the same in the side-table drawer for
the corkscrew; her rush to the kitchen to fetch that instrument where it
has been nefariously borrowed and where the point of the screw has been
broken off; the difficult (and crooked) insertion of the broken screw
into the cork; the repeated frantic tugs at the bottle, held tight
between the knees, finally the climax, when the cork bursts out and the
champagne along with it, up in the reddening face and over the white
muslin apron of the poor anxious woman, who hurries nervously to wipe it
off, and then pours the small quantity of liquor which remains bubbling
over the glasses, till the table-cloth is swamped;—such in brief is
Feminine Futility, as exhibited in the drawing of corks! Luckily it is
possible to find parlour-maids who know how to use, and will keep at
hand, both cold-chisels and corkscrews. But they are exceptions. The
normal woman, in the presence of a nailed-down box or a champagne
bottle, behaves as I have depicted from careful study; and the
irritation she produces in me is past words, especially if a man be
waiting for his beverage and observing the spectacle of the helplessness
of my sex. If “Man” be “a tool-making animal,” I am afraid that “Woman”
is a “tool-breaking” one. I think every girl, as well as every boy,
ought to be given a month’s training in a carpenter’s shop to teach her
how to strike a nail straight; what is the difference between the proper
insertion and extraction of nails and of screws; why chisels should not
be employed as screw-drivers; how far preferable for making holes are
gimlets to hairpins or the points of scissors; and, finally, the general
superiority of glue over paste or gum for sticking wooden furniture when
broken by her besom of destruction!
My dear friend Emily Shaen wrote an excellent tract which I should like
to see republished, urging that it is absurd to go on talking of the
House being the proper sphere of a woman, while we neglect to teach her
the very rudiments of a _Hausfrau’s_ duties, and leave her to find them
all out, at her husband’s expense, when she marries. The nature of gas
and of gasometers, and how _not_ to cause explosions nor be cheated in
the bill; the arrangements of water-works in houses, pipes, drains,
cisterns, ball-cocks and all the rest, for hot and cold water; the
choice of properly morticed, not merely glued, furniture; what
constitutes a good kitchen range, and how coal should be economised in
it; how to choose fresh meat, &c., such should be her lessons. To this
might be usefully added an inkling of the laws relating to masters and
servants, debts, bills, &c., &c., and of the elementary arrangements of
banking and investing money. It was once discovered at my school that a
very clever young lady, who could speak four languages and play two
instruments well, _could not read the clock_! I think there are many
grown up women, well-educated according to the ordinary standard of
their class, whose ignorance concerning the simplest matters of
household duty is not a whit less absurd.
In 1881—I prepared and delivered to an audience of about 150 ladies, in
the Westminster Palace Hotel, a course of six Lectures on the _Duties of
Women_. My dear friend, Miss Anna Swanwick took the chair for me on
these occasions, and performed her part with such tact and geniality as
to give me every advantage. My auditors were very attentive and
sympathetic, and altogether the task was made very pleasant to me. I
repeated the course again at Clifton the same year, Mrs. Beddoe, the
wife of Dr. John Beddoe the anthropologist who was then living at that
place, most obligingly lending me her large drawing-rooms.
These Lectures when printed, went through three editions in England and,
I think, eight in America, the last being brought out by Miss Willard,
who adopted the little book as the first of a series on women’s
concerns, published by her vast and wonderful organisation, the W.C.T.U.
My object in giving these Lectures was to impress women as strongly as
might be in my power, with the unspeakable importance of adding to our
claims for just _Rights_ of all kinds, the adoption of the highest
standard of _Duty_; and the strict preservation amongst us of all
womanly virtues, while adding to them those others to the growth of
which our conditions have hitherto been unfavourable,—namely, Truth and
Courage. I desired also to discuss the new views current amongst us
respecting filial and conjugal “obedience;” the proper attitude to be
held towards (unrepentant) vice, and many other topics. Finally I wished
to place the efforts to obtain political freedom on what I deem to be
their proper ground. I ask:
“What ought we to do at present, as concerns all public work wherein
it is possible for us to obtain a share?
“The question seems to answer itself in its mere statement. We are
bound to do all we can to promote the virtue and happiness of our
fellow-men and women, and _therefore_ we must accept and seize every
instrument of power, every vote, every influence which we can obtain,
to enable us to promote virtue and happiness.
“... Why are we not to wish and strive to be allowed to place our
hands on that vast machinery whereby, in a constitutional realm, the
great work of the world is carried on, and which achieves by its
enormous power, ten-fold either the good or the harm which any
individual can reach; which may be turned to good or turned to harm
according to the hands which touch it? In almost every case it is only
by legislation that the roots of great evils can be reached at all,
and that the social diseases of pauperism, vice and crime can be
brought within hope of cure.
“You will judge from these remarks the ground on which, as a matter of
duty, I place the demand for woman’s political emancipation. I think
we are bound to seek it, in the first place, as a means,—a very great
means,—of fulfilling our Social Duty, of contributing to the virtue
and happiness of mankind, and advancing the Kingdom of God. There are
many other reasons, viewed from the point of Expediency; but this is
the view from that of Duty. We know too well that men who possess
political rights do not always, or often, regard them in this fashion;
but this is no reason why we should not do so. We also know that the
individual power of one vote at any election seems rarely to effect
any appreciable difference; but this also need not trouble us, for,
little or great, if we can obtain any influence at all, we ought to
seek for it, and the multiplication of the votes of women bent on
securing conscientious candidates, would soon make it not only
appreciable, but weighty. Nay, further, the direct influence of a vote
is but a small part of the power which the possession of the political
franchise confers. Its indirect influence is far more important. In a
government like ours, where the basis of representation is so
immensely extensive the whole business of legislation is carried on by
pressure—the pressure of each represented class and party to get its
grievances redressed, to make its interests prevail.... It is one of
the sore grievances of women that, not possessing representation, the
measures which concern them are for ever postponed to the bills
promoted by the represented classes (_e.g._, the Married Woman’s
Property Bill, was, if I mistake not, six times set down for reading
in one Session in vain, the House being counted out on every
occasion).
“Thus, in asking for the Parliamentary Franchise, we are asking, as I
understand it, for the power to influence legislation generally; and
in every other kind of franchise, municipal, parochial, or otherwise,
for similar power to bring our sense of justice and righteousness to
bear on public affairs....
“What is this, after all, my friends, but _Public Spirit_; in one
shape called Patriotism, in another Philanthropy; the extension of our
sympathies beyond the narrow bounds of our homes, and disinterested
enthusiasm for every good and sacred cause? As I said at first, all
the world has recognised from the earliest times how good and noble
and wholesome a thing it is for men to have their breasts filled with
such public spirit; and we look upon them when they exhibit it as
glorified thereby. Do you think it is not equally an ennobling thing
for a _woman’s_ soul to be likewise filled with these large and
generous and unselfish emotions?”
I draw the Lectures to a conclusion thus:—
“None of us, I am sure, realise how blessed a thing we might make of
our lives if we would but give ourselves, heart and soul, to fulfil
_all_ the obligations, personal, social and religious which rest upon
us; to gain the strength—
‘To think, to feel, to do, only the holy Right,
To yield no step in the awful race, no blow in the fearful fight,’
to live, in purity and truth and courage, a life of love to God and to
man; striving to make every spot where we dwell, every region to which
our influence can extend GOD’S KINGDOM, where His Will shall be done
on earth as it is done in heaven.”