armholes: “Well, Madam, you have a right to comfortable food;
a fire to keep you warm, and two calico dresses a year. These
are your legal rights; all beyond these are the gifts of your
husband. Luxuries of food and clothing, journies and books,
these are not yours by law; it remains with your husband to
decide whether he will furnish them to you or not.”
And this is Christian civilization for woman at the close of the
nineteenth century of this era.
Although married women of the State of New York have enjoyed certain
property rights since 1848, subsequent legislation in various ways
increasing that power, it was not until 1882, that the Court of
Appeals decided them to be the rightful owners of articles of personal
adornment and convenience coming from their husbands, possessing
power to bequeath them at death to their heirs. The same year the
Supreme Court of that state decided that a wife may sue her husband for
damages for assault and battery. The influence of these decisions in
recognizing woman’s rights of person, especially that of the Supreme
Court in deciding the right of the wife to punish the husband through
the courts for brutal treatment, can scarcely be overestimated. It
opened a new era for woman:
First: A recognition of the wife’s personality.
Second: Holding the husband responsible for his treatment of the wife.
Third: An acknowledgement of the wife’s right to protection as against
the husband. It destroyed, in this state the old _femme covert_
teaching of Christianity, and recognized a wife as possessing the
common rights of a human being.
The United States, making pretense of the greatest governmental freedom
in the world, and in reality according it to men of every color and
degree of intelligence or property, still denies such liberty to woman.
In many of the states, the old restrictions of modern common law still
prevail. There are states where the property of the wife upon marriage
falls into the control of the husband, to do with as he alone pleases,
the wife not retaining the right to its use or its management in any
way whatsoever. There are other states where the separate property of
the husband and the wife is made communal, but in those states the
control of this communal property is in the husband’s hands. In most
states the old restrictions still exist, and a woman cannot make a
will; cannot act as executrix or administratrix; can neither sue nor
be sued. In the largest proportion of the states in which the separate
property of the wife is recognized, the husband still has the advantage
in heirship. In less than one-fifth of the states has the wife the
same control over the children of the marriage as the husband. In the
remaining four-fifths and over, the father is assumed to be sole owner
of the children, who can be bound out, willed or given away without the
consent or even knowledge of the mother. Can barbarism go farther than
this?
So that even in this year 1892, within eight years of the Twentieth
Christian century, we find the largest proportion of the United States
still giving to the husband custody of the wife’s person; the exclusive
control of the children of the marriage; of the wife’s personal and
real estate; the absolute right to her labor and all products of her
industry. In no state does the law recognize the legal existence
of the wife, unless she relinquishes her own name, upon marriage,
taking that of her husband, thus sinking her identity in his; the old
_femme covert_,—or covered woman,—idea of the law books under state
and church. That woman is an individual with the right to her own
separate existence, has not yet permeated the thought of church, state
or society. A letter to the American press from Rev. Robert Laird
Collyer, while re-visiting his native country a few years since, gives
the unbiased views of a native-born English clergyman, as to woman’s
position in that land of christian civilization, the husband being
represented as king of the household, the wife as his dutiful subject.
The letter was headed:
MARRIAGE CUSTOMS IN ENGLAND
The Man King of the House, the Woman His Dutiful Subject.
The man is the king of the English household, and the wife is
only the prime minister. There is no confusion or overlapping
of authority. The will of the husband is law. He has not
only the place of honor but of ease. The arrangements of the
house, the company entertained, and the service employed,
all have respect to his wishes and to his convenience. The
wife conducts the affairs of state for the king. She has her
household and, more than likely, her personal allowance, and
she renders a strict account of stewardship either weekly or
monthly.
The wife’s personal expenditures are less, much less than
the husband’s. In many instances he will spend more on his
dress as a man than she does as a woman, for the rule is, the
Englishman is the best-dressed man and the English woman is
the worst dressed in the civilized world.
“The will of the husband is law,” the wife possessing no freedom,
but renders “a strict account of her stewardship, either weekly or
monthly.” Kicks, blows, wounds inflicted upon the wife under the
countenance of the civil law; the will of the husband as undisputed
law; her person, her property, her children under his sole control;
what is the condition of the wife in England today but one of degraded
slavery? That every woman does not endure all these wrongs is simply
because she has a lenient master. Like Adolph under St. Clair, in
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, she has freedom because a good master allows her
to take it; under a bad master she suffers as Adolph when falling into
the hands of Legree. Personal rights are the basis of all other rights;
personal slavery is the root of all other wrongs. Neither freedom of
the intellect or conscience can exist without freedom of person. Thus
civilization has not yet existed, that which has borne the name having
been but the thought of the few; the civilization of the present is
not enlightened, it belongs to the barbarous ages; authority and not
justice is the rule. To the present time the lenient sentence imposed
upon the English husband who beats his wife is such as to invite a
repetition of the offense; knocking a wife down, beating and bruising
her with a poker are rights secured to the husband under present
English law.
A man named Hefferon, at Rotherham, finding his wife had gone
to some place of which he disapproved, knocked her down and
beat her violently with a poker. She bled from both ears, her
throat was scratched, and she was badly bruised on her back
and arms. Mr. Justice Day practically told the jury to acquit.
He said the case ought not to have come before them, and he
suggested that the prisoner had been merely exercising that
control over his wife which was still sanctioned by the law of
England.[43] The jury acquitted promptly, as directed.[44]
To such extent is this abuse of woman under law as to have called forth
a vigorous article in the _Westminister Review_,[45] under head of “The
Law in Relation to Woman.”
There is another cruel injustice to woman, which is so
notorious as to have become a mere truism. It is referred to
almost daily, yet familiarity has bred such contempt, that it
goes on unchecked and unabated. We refer to the monstrously
lenient sentences passed upon husbands who assault and beat
their wives. In one of our criminals courts recently, two
men and a woman were sentenced to six years penal servitude
for stealing a watch by force, while a man who assaulted and
grievously wounded his wife and mother-in-law with a reaping
hook, got eighteen months’ imprisonment. An instance occurred
the other day in a small municipal court. A man pleaded guilty
to assaulting and kicking his wife and another woman with
effusion of blood and injury to their persons. He was fined a
pound for each female. Shortly after two men were convicted
of injuring public seats belonging to the municipality, by
knocking them about, etc., they were fined two pounds each.
Clearly, therefore, in the eyes of this magistrate a municipal
seat is worth exactly twice the value of a woman. Parallel
sentences to these may be seen almost daily in the newspapers
in any part of the United Kingdom. In the police courts,
wife-beaters often get off with a few days imprisonment,
sometimes with an admonition. If it be argued that theft is
such a common offense that it is necessary that it should be
punished with greater severity than cruelty, we rejoice that
the argument applies quite as forcibly to wife-beating, which,
unfortunately is as common an offence as can be found among a
certain class of society.[46]
The comparison here shown between the penalty of criminally assaulting
and wounding women, not alone the man’s wife but also her aged mother,
most forcibly shows the entire disregard of Christian England in the
last half of the nineteenth century, for the personal rights of all
women. No proof is needed other than such decisions; nor is the United
States far in advance. Within ten months from the formation of the
“Protective Agency for Women and Children,” organized in Chicago, April
1886, it had investigated nearly one hundred complaints. Although in a
majority of these cases the agency was successful in securing redress,
it yet found there was not legal remedy where the husband and father
failed to provide for his family; and that in cases of crimes against
women, its efforts were crippled by the disposition of police justices
to regard such crimes as venial offenses, either dismissing such cases
upon frivolous pretexts or imposing light sentences. Nothing could
more clearly demonstrate women’s degraded condition in the nineteenth
century of christian civilization, than the almost universal demand
for laws securing better protection to women and children. These two
classes, unrecognized by church or state, are still largely without
that pale of protection man has reared for himself. January 23, 1886,
the _Inter Ocean_, gave more than six columns to an account of the
dreadful crimes committed against women and children in Chicago alone,
within the short period of the preceding four months. It also showed
the ease with which criminals of that class escaped punishment, not
alone from laxity of protective legislation for their victims but still
more from the tendency of magistrates to ignore crimes perpetrated
by men against women; this condition being the natural result of the
teaching of the church in regard to woman. In the city of Boston, 1884,
the Chief of Police, testified that there were at least fifteen cases
of brutal wife-beating in that city every week, and this is but one
type of the injuries perpetrated upon women for which the teachings
of christianity are directly responsible. So common this crime and so
ineffective all efforts to stop it, that the State of Delaware has
re-established the long abolished whipping-post, for offenders of this
character, thus acknowledging christian civilization to be a failure,
and resorting to the retributive punishment common among barbarians.
But the remedy for crimes against women, and for the indifference of
magistrates, does not lie in the punishment of the offenders, but in
different sentiments in regard to woman in both church and state. Their
teachings are the real foundations of the evil. Within the past ten
years, the judge of an English Court decided that the flogging of a
wife in the presence of her son did not constitute cruelty, sustaining
his decision by reference to Blackstone and other learned christian
jurists. It was during that same year (1884) that the chief of the
Boston police testified to the many cases of brutal wife beating in
that “Athens of America,” every week. So common this form of assault
that a bill was introduced in the Massachusetts lower House for the
punishment of wife beaters, by a public whipping of not less than ten
or more than thirty lashes.[47] For those refractory wives of mediaeval
christian England, whom whippings failed to subdue, other punishments
were invented; such as the “Ducking Stool,” the “Scold’s Bridle,”
etc.[48] The Scold’s Bridle, also known as the Witches Bridle and the
Brank, was an extremely painful method of torture, although not as
absolutely dangerous to life as the Ducking Stool, yet fastened in the
mouth, its sharp edges pressing down upon the tongue, if the “Brawling
Woman” attempted to speak her tongue was cut and the torture great.[49]
An American clergyman describing in a public lecture an “ancient
machine” seen by him in christian England, “for curing a scolding
wife,” accompanied his description by the very clerical intimation
that it could now be made by an ordinary blacksmith. Two curved plates
of bronze conformed to the shape of the head, were delicately hinged
and provided with hooks to place in the corners of the mouth. When
adjusted, the machine was buckled back of the head.[50]
The Ducking Stool[51] consisted of a chair securely fastened upon a
long plank balanced upon upright standards, and so arranged that the
victim could be launched sixteen or eighteen feet into the pond or
stream, while the executioner of the sentence stood upon dry ground.
The back and arms of the chair were engraved with representations of
devils torturing scolds. The culprit securely fastened in this chair,
so confined as to be entirely helpless, was sometimes drowned; the
chair being plunged once, twice, or thrice in some muddy stream or
slimy pond. The suggestive and usual place of storing the Ducking
Stool, when not in use, was the church-yard. Almost every English town
of importance possessed one; their use was continued until the present
century. The Leominster Ducking Stool, still preserved, was used in
1809, by order of the magistrates, upon a woman named Jane Corran, who
received her punishment near Kenwater Bridge. As late as 1817 Sarah
Leeke was wheeled around town in this chair, although the lowness of
the stream prevented the ducking[52] she would otherwise have received.
Railing and scolding or “answering back,” were deemed crimes on the
part of the wife, who, “commanded to be under obedience,” was expected
silently to submit to oppression of every kind. That she did not—that
she dared revolt by words—that women in sufficient number to cause
the invention of such an instrument, were rebellious in midst of the
horrid oppression created by the church, speaks well for the womanly
nature and thrills the heart with admiration the same as when old
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, refused to lay her head on the
block at the executioner’s mandate, declaring that as she was innocent,
she would not voluntarily place herself in position for death. While
England has the shame of originating the Ducking Stool, the “Pilgrim
Fathers,” fleeing from religious persecution, failed not to take
with them the implements of cruelty used in the domestic oppression
of woman. The Ducking Stool, and the “Stool of Penitence” figure in
the early annals of New England. Upon the latter, the Scarlet Letter
of shame affixed upon her breast, the unmarried mother was forcibly
seated beneath the pulpit, under public gaze, while her companion in
sin protected by church and state, perchance held his place among
the elders in the jury box, or upon the bench as the judge who had
condemned her. Old Colonial legislation makes us acquainted with the
various methods in use for punishing the free speech of women in this
country two hundred years since.
“A Law to Punish Babbling Women” enacted by the General
Assembly, of Virginia, 1662.
Whereas, many babbling women slander and scandalize their
neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often involved
in chargable and vexatious suits and cost in great damages.
Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that in
actions of slander caused by the wife, after judgment passed
for damages, the wife shall be punished by ducking; and if
the slander be so enormous as to be judged at greater damages
than 500 lbs. of tobacco, then the wife to suffer ducking for
each 500 pounds of tobacco adjudged against the husband, if he
refuses to pay the tobacco.
As this was the state in which wives were bought in exchange for
tobacco, it is not surprising to find the penalty of her free speech
to be paid in tobacco, the wife to suffer ducking for each 500 pounds
penalty in excess of the first. Massachusetts was not long in following
the example of Virginia, and in 1672 ten years later, passed
A Law for the Punishment of Scolds in Massachusetts.
Whereas, there is no express punishment (by law hitherto
established) affixed to the evil practice of sundry persons
by exhorbitancy of tongue in reviling and scolding; it is
therefore ordered that all such persons convicted before any
court or magistrate that hath proper cognizance of the case,
shall be gagged, set in a ducking stool and dipped over head
and ears three times, in some convenient place of fresh or
salt water, as the court or magistrate shall judge meet.[53]
Nor must we believe that the punishment of women for use of the
tongue, is of past ages. Even in the United States, women are to this
day sometimes arraigned for free speaking. Laws to punish “babbling
women” enacted in colonial days are still in force. It is but a few
years since a woman of St. Louis was arrested and brought before a
magistrate as a common scold.[54] In the State of New Jersey, 1884, a
woman was brought before the courts, convicted, on the old grounds of
being a “common scold” and fined $25, and costs. Death not infrequently
accompanied the use of the ducking stool, the poor gagged victim, her
hands securely fastened, being utterly unable to help herself. But
we do not learn that either the magistrate or the husband was held
responsible to the law for such death. The sufferers, like those under
the catholic inquisition of the fourteenth century, were deemed outside
of the pale of sympathy or human rights, and the devils depicted upon
the back of ducking stools as laying hold of their victims, were
conceded to have but taken their rightful prey.
Such has been part of Christian legislation for women in America, and
yet she is told to see how much Christianity has done for her. To such
extent has this church doctrine of man’s superiority to woman, and
the right of the husband to control of the wife proceeded, that many
husbands believe they possess the right to sell their wives. Since the
reformation her sale in the market-place as an animal, held by a halter
about her waist, has been recognized by English law even as late as the
present century. Although now forbidden, the practice of wife-sale is
still occasionally found both in England and in America. But when the
law takes cognizance of such a sale its penalty is visited upon the
innocent wife and not upon the guilty husband. The _English Women’s
Suffrage Journal_ of December 1st, 1883, reported such a case.
November 13th, 1883, Betsy Wardle, was indicted for having
on the 4th of September, 1882, married George Chusmall, her
former husband being alive. The prisoner pleaded guilty, but
said her former husband gave her no peace and sold her for a
quart of beer. She imagined this was a legal transaction, and
that she could marry again. The second husband was asked how
he came to marry the prisoner. He answered “Well, I bout her.”
The judge said, “You are not fool enough to suppose you can
buy another man’s wife?” on which he replied, “I was.”
Mr. Swift asked his lordship not to pass a severe sentence.
The prisoner imagined that because she had been sold for
sixpence there was nothing criminal in marrying again. His
lordship said it was absolutely necessary to pass some
punishment on _her_ to teach her that a _man_ had no more
right to sell his own wife than his neighbor’s wife, or cow,
or ox, or ass, or anything that was his.
The reason given by the judge for punishing the woman, is extremely
suggestive of woman’s condition under the law. The wife who had been
sold, the innocent victim of this masculine transaction, was sentenced
to a week’s imprisonment with hard labor, while the man who sold her
and the man who bought her escaped without punishment or censure. The
judge in quoting the tenth commandment, graded the wife with the ox and
the ass in the belongings of a man; the decision thus ranking her with
the cattle of the stable.[55] To add to the infamy of the trial, it was
the occasion of much unseemly jesting and laughter. It took place at
the Liverpool Assizes before Justice Denham. His judgement paralleled
the decision of the “Seney Trial” in Ohio, 1879. The selling a wife as
a cow[56] in the market place was by no means uncommon during the early
part of the century in England. Ashton[57] give numerous instances of
such sales.
The laws of England are those of Christianity based upon the
theological teaching of man’s superiority over woman; she is his
servant, subordinate to him in all things, a condition except where
removed by special statute, existing today.[58] Returned missionaries
who refer to the wife as waiting upon the husband at table in heathen
countries not eating until he is satisfied, as proof of the different
customs brought about by christianity, should inform themselves of the
condition of the christian wife for nearly a thousand years in what is
regarded as the foremost christian country in the world. He will then
have learned that circumstances quite contradictory to ecclesiasticism
finally permitted the English wife to assume a seat at the table with
her husband, a place she was not allowed to take for many hundred years
after the introduction of christianity into that island. In every
country where christianity exists, women now are, and during all the
years of its civil power have been, legislated for as slaves. They have
been imprisoned for crimes which if committed by a man were punished
by simply branding on the hand; they have been condemned to be buried
alive for other crimes which if committed by a man, were atoned for
by the payment of a fine. Having first robbed woman of her property
and denied her the control of her own earnings, the christian religion
allowed her to suffer the most agonizing form of death, a living
burial, for lack of that very money of which she had been civilly and
ecclesiastically robbed. The law so far controlled family life that
for many hundred years it bound to servile labor, all unmarried women
between the ages of eleven and forty. The father possessed absolute
control over the marital destiny of his daughter.
Instances of wife sale are not uncommon in the United States, and
although the price is usually higher than that given for English
wives, reaching from three hundred to four thousand dollars, still,
as low a sum as five cents has been recorded. A prosperous resident
of Black Hills, Dakota, is said to have begun his business start in
life through sale of his wife. If a wife is a husband’s property the
same as a cow, it is manifestly unjust that legal punishment of any
kind should fall upon her because of her master’s action. She is
irresponsible. The right of sale logically goes with the right of
beating, of taking the wife’s property and holding her earnings, of
owning her children and she should be exempt from punishment for her
own sale. In a much larger measure we find the same rule of punishing
wives for the crimes of husbands, enforced in the United States, in the
penalty of disfranchisement of the women of Utah for the polygamy of
the men of Utah. And this penalty was extended not alone to the wives
of polygamous husbands—themselves possessing but one husband—victims
alike of church and state, but the non-Mormon or “Gentile Women” of
that territory, were also disfranchised by the XLIX Congress of the
United States because of the polygamy of a portion of the Mormon men;
all women of that territory were deprived of their vested rights,
rights that had been in existence for seventeen years, because of the
crimes of men.[59] Against this injustice, the Woman Suffragists of the
country protested through means of a committee in a
MEMORIAL.
_To the President of the United States_: