traditional privileges at the expense of the villeins.—_H. S. Maine._
_The courts of Bearn openly maintained that this right grew up
naturally._
[17] Sometimes the contumacious husband was harnessed by the side of
a horse or an ox, compelled to do a brute’s work and to herd with the
cattle.
[18] He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy rabble down to
the lowest scullion give chase to the “cuckold.”—_Michelet._
[19] The oldest born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord,
for he, perchance it was, that begat him. When the guests have retired,
the newly wedded husband shall permit his lord to enter the bed of his
wife, unless he shall have redeemed her for five shillings and four
pence.—_Grimm._
[20] Droit de cuissage c’est le droit de mettre une cuisse dans le lit
d’une autre, ou de coucher avec le femme d’une vassal ou d’une serf.
So much scandal was caused that finally the archbishop of Bourges
abolished this right in his diocese.—_Feudal Dictionary._
[21] A yoke of cattle and a measure of wheat was afterwards substituted
for a money ransom, but even this redemption was in most cases entirely
beyond the power of the serf.
Under the feudal system the lord of the manor held unlimited sway over
his serfs. He farther possessed the so-called _Jus Primae Noctis_
(Right of the First Night), which he could, however, relinquish in
virtue of a certain payment, the name of which betrayed its nature. It
has been latterly asserted that this right never existed, an assertion
which to me appears entirely unfounded. It is clear the right was not
a written one, that it was not summed up in paragraphs; it was the
natural consequence of the dependent relationship, and required no
registration in any book of law. If the female serf pleased the lord
he enjoyed her, if not he let her alone. In Hungary, Transylvania, and
the Danubian principalities, there was no written _Jus Primae Noctis_
either, but one learns enough of this subject by inquiry of those who
know the country and its inhabitants, as to the manners which prevail
between the land owners and the female population. That imposts of this
nature existed cannot be denied, and the names speak for themselves.
August Bebel.—_Woman in the Past, Present and Future._
[22] In a parish outside Bourges the parson as being a lord especially
claimed the first fruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his
rights to the husband.
[23] The infamous noble who accompanied a certain notorious actress to
this country in the fall of 1886, possessed forty livings in his gift.
[24] No greater proof of this statement is needed than the rapidity
with which the disease brought by the sailors of Columbus spread over
Europe; infecting the king on his throne, the peasant in the field, the
priest at the altar, the monk and nun in the cloister.
[25] In deference to that public sentiment which required the ruler to
pose before the world as a libertine, Friedrich Wilhelm I., of Prussia
(1713-1740), although old and in feeble health, kept up the pretense of
a liason with the wife of one of his generals, the intimacy consisting
of an hour’s daily walk in the castle yard.—_August Bebel._
[26] Down to Pius IX. See _The Woman, the Priest and the Confessional_.
[27] When the Emperor Charles II entered Bourges, he was saluted by a
deputation of perfectly naked women. At the entrance of King Ladislaus
into Vienna, 1452, the municipal government sent a deputation of public
women to meet him the beauty of whose forms was rather enhanced than
concealed by their covering of gauze. Such cases were by no means
unusual.—_Woman in the Past, Present and Future._
[28] _Memoirs of the Princess of Bareith_, a sister of Frederick the
Great.
[29] In Russia the nobles have such rights by law over the women of
their lands that the population scarcely resent the sale by auction
of all the young peasants of their village. These nobles, a race once
proud and mean, extravagant and covetous, full of vice and cunning,
are said to be a class superior to the people. Yet they are working
the ruin of their influence by multiplying in the masses the number of
individuals, already very considerable, to whom they have transmitted
their genius with their blood.—_A. R. Craig, M.A._
[30] London, February 1.—The Odessa correspondent of “The Daily News”
says: Hunger typhus is spreading alarmingly. In large towns in this
region all the hospitals are filled, and private buildings are being
converted into hospitals. This is the state of affairs in Moskovskia
and Viedomosti. A correspondent writing from Russia declares that the
more fanatical and superstitious portion of the peasantry believe that
Count Tolstoi is Antichrist, and decline to accept his bounty for fear
they will thus commit their souls to perdition.
[31] Two celebrated women, Augusta, of Koningsmark, and Madame Dudevant
(George Sand), traced their descent to this king.—Letters to “New York
Tribune.”
[32] Adam Badeau.—_Aristocracy in England._
[33] The at one time famous “Alexandra Limp,” affecting the princess of
Wales, and copied in walk by ultra-fashionable women, was said to be
due to the effects of an infamous disease contracted by the princess
from her husband.
[34] Rev. Dr. Varley.—“New York Sun,” July, 1885.
[35] At the beginning of the Christian era, Corinth possessed a
thousand women who were devoted to the service of its idol, the
Corinthian Venus. “To Corinthianize” came to express the utmost
lewdness, but Corinth, as sunken as she was in sensual pleasure, was
not under the pale of Christianity. She was a heathen city, outside of
that light which, coming into the world, is held to enlighten every man
that accepts it.
[36] Les Cuisiniers et les marmitons de l’archeveques de Vienne avaient
impose un tribut sur les mariages; on croit que certains feuditaires
exigeaient un droit obscene de leur vassaux qui se mariaient, quel
fut transforme ensuite en droit de _cuissage_ consistant, de la part
du seigneur, a mettre une jambe nue dans le lit des nouveaux epoux.
Dans d’autres pays l’homme ne pouvait coucher avec sa femme les trois
premieres nuits sans le consentement de l’eveque ou du seigneur du
fief. Cesar Cantu.—_Histoire Universelle_, Vol. IX. p. 202-3.
[37] _Moral History of Women._
[38] There are those who to enrich themselves would not only rob their
sisters of their portion, but would sell for money the honor of those
who bear their name. The authority of the son during the feudal period
was so absolute that the father and mother themselves often winked at
this hideous traffic.—_Ibid_, p. 46.
[39] Unless an heiress, woman possessed no social importance; unless
an inmate of a religious house no religious position. There are some
records of her in this last position, showing what constant effort and
strength of intellect were demanded from her to thwart the machinations
of abbots and monks.—_Sketches of Fontervault._
[40] See page 193.—_Fleta._
[41] _Bracton_, 26, 195, 208. _Littleton’s Tenures_, 55, 174, 209.
[42] Gratain, Canon for Spain in 633, says the nuptial robe was
garnished with white and purple ribbons as a sign of the continence to
which young married people devoted themselves for a time.
[43] Eight young men, living in the vicinity of North Rose, Wayne
County, have been held to await the action of the grand jury for
rioting. A young married couple named Garlic were about to retire
for the night when they were startled by the appearance of a party
of men in the yard. The party immediately commenced beating on pans,
discharging guns and pistols, pounding with clubs, screaming and
kicking at the doors of the house. The bride and groom were terrified,
but finally the groom mustered enough courage to demand what the men
wanted there. Shouts of “Give us lots of cider or we’ll horn you to
death,” were the answers. An attempt was made to break in a rear door
of the house. The bride and groom and John Wager, who was also present
in the house, braced the doors from the inside to prevent a forcible
entrance, and the inmates had to defend the property nearly all night.
The horning party, at last weary of calling for cider, left the
premises giving an extra strong fusillade of firearms and a series of
yells as they departed. The eight young men were arrested a few days
later on suspicion of being in the horning party.—_Press Report_, Jan.
14, 1887.
[44] Whenever we discover symbolized forms, we are justified in
inferring that in the past life of the people employing them there were
corresponding realities. McLennon.—_Studies in Ancient History_, p. 6.
[45] He was thrown into the moat to cool his ardor, pelted with stones,
derided as a proud and envious wretch.—_Michelet._
[46] The maids redeeme their virginities with a certain piece of money,
and by that Terme their lands are held to this day. Heywoode.—_History
of Women_, London, 1624; _Lib._ 7,339.
[47] Margaret was canonized in 1251, and made the Patron Saint of
Scotland in 1673. Several of the Scotch feudalry, despite royal
protestation, kept up in the famous practice until a late date. One of
the earls of Crawford, a truculent and lustful anarch, popularly known
and dreaded as “Earl Brant,” in the sixteenth century, was probably
among the last who openly claimed leg-right, the literal translation of
_droit de jambage_.—_Sketches of Feudalism._
[48] The feeling is common in the north that a laird, or chieftain,
getting a vassal’s or clansmen’s wife or daughter with child, is doing
her a great honor. Burke.—_Letters from an English Gentleman_, about
1730.
[49] _Pres de cet etang, et devant sa maison._
[50] In days to come people will be slow to believe that the law among
Christian nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden
slavery; that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous
outrage that could ever wound man’s heart. The Lord Spiritual had
this right no less than the Lord Temporal. The parson being a lord,
expressly claimed the first fruits of the bride, but was willing to
sell his rights to the husband. The courts of Berne openly maintain
that this right grew up naturally. Michelet.—_La Sorciere_, p. 62.
[51] Among the rights asserted by the Protestant clergy in the
middle ages, and which caused much dispute, was exemption from lay
jurisdiction even in cases of felony.
From the throne downward every secular office was dependent upon the
church. Froude.—_Times of Erasmus and Luther._
[52] Among these de coucher avec leur femmes, d’enlever les premices de
leurs filles.
[53] _H. S. Maine_.
[54] In Babylon every young woman was obliged once in her life to offer
her person for sale, nor was she permitted to leave the temple, where
she sat with a cord about her waist, until some stranger taking it in
hand led her away. The money thus obtained passed into the treasury of
the temple as her “purchase money, or redemption, releasing her from
farther prostitution, and permitting her marriage, which was forbidden
until such sale had been consummated.”
[55] Although a similar custom is said to have prevailed in India under
Brahaminical rule, it must be remembered that wherever found it is an
accompaniment of the Patriarchate, and under some form of religion
where the feminine is no longer considered a portion of the divinity,
or woman allowed in the priesthood.
[56] It has been too readily believed that the wrong was formal, not
real. But the price laid down in certain countries exceeded the means
of almost every peasant. In Scotland, for instance, the demand was for
several cows, a price immense, impossible.
[57] _Christian History, First Period_, by Joseph Henry Allen.
[58] In the history of Julius Caesar there is something peculiarly
curious and mythical. Caesar had all the honors paid to him as to a
divine person. At the end of five years a festival was instituted to
his honor, as to a person of divine extraction. A college of priests
was established to perform the rites instituted for the occasion. A day
was dedicated to him, and he had the title also of Julian Jove, and a
temple was erected to him.—_Anacalypsis_, I, 611.
[59] Law of the first night.
[60] The lord’s right.
[61] Leg right—the right to place a naked leg in bed with the bride.
[62] Droit de cuissage, c’ele droit de mettre une cuisse dans le lit
d’une autre, ou de coucher avec le femme d’un vassal, ou d’un serf.
[63] Droit d’afforge, the right to prey upon the bride.
[64] Droit de marquette, took its name in Scotland from the redemption
piece of money, a demi-mark, marquette, or little mark, a weight of
gold or silver used in Great Britain and many other European countries.
[65] _Mrs. Josephine Butler_, so stating.
[66] A government license reads: “Chinese women for the use of
Europeans only.”
[67] _Contagious Disease Acts._
[68] _The Emancipation of Women_, January, 1888.
[69] “The penal code provides for the punishment of a man who commits
mischief by injuring an animal of the value of ten rupees or upwards,
with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with
fine, or with both. If the animal be worth fifty rupees, the punishment
may be for five years. If a man induces his neighbor’s dog, by bait
or otherwise, to follow him with the intention of dishonestly taking
the dog out of his neighbor’s possession, he may be punished with
imprisonment for three years, or with fine, or with both. But while a
man’s dog, his horse, his elephant are taken care of by legislation;
while the very plants in his garden are protected; his young daughter,
the light of his eyes and the joy of his home, may be ruined and her
fair fame stolen with impunity, provided she has attained the age of
ten years and is unmarried, and proof is wanting that she has resisted
her seducer.”
[70] The New York Society for the “Prevention of Diseases.”
[71] Of Berlin, August Bebel says: “Now things are neither better nor
worse in Berlin than in any other large town. It would be difficult
to decide which most resembled ancient Babylon; orthodox Greek St.
Petersburg, Catholic Rome, Christian Germanic Berlin, heathen Paris,
puritan London, or lively Vienna.—_Woman in the Past, Present and
Future._
[72] The latest attempt for licensing vice in the United States was
made in New Orleans, 1892, in the form of an ordinance proposing to
grant to Dr. Wm. Harnon the privilege of levying an inspection tax upon
those known as “Public Women” of $1.50 a week for fifteen years.
The “Louisiana Review” said of it:
“A more revolting proposition than this has never come under our
notice, and we are amazed that the health committee failed to detect
its character, however artfully it may have been screened by the
pretext that it was intended to lessen the harm of the social evil.”
The “New Delta,” in its issue of August 31, said: “The queer and
ill-favored monopoly which the ordinance for the regulation of houses
of bad repute sought to establish has not been successful on the first
effort. It goes back to a committee. Let us hope that it will remain
buried there forever, and decent people be saved the infliction of a
public discussion of the miserable scheme. Such systems of ‘regulation’
would disgrace the devil, and the proposition for the city to share in
the plunder of these poor wretches would shame a Piute village.”
The Woman’s Journal, September 19, said:
“It is well that this measure has failed on the first attempt; but to
refer a matter to a committee is not necessarily to kill it, and its
fate in the committee should be closely watched. The laws establishing
the state regulation of vice in England were smuggled through
Parliament about 1 o’clock in the morning, when half the members
were absent or asleep; but it took seventeen years of painful and
distasteful agitation to repeal them. Prevention of bad legislation is
better than cure.”
This attempt was finally defeated through the energetic opposition and
work of Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon.
[73] The reporter, while the committee was still in session, went to
a procuress and ordered a _pretty girl_, 14 years of age, certified
by a physician to be good, to be delivered to his order as “agent for
_gentlemen of 60_.” The madame accepted the order, and in a short time
produced the girl certified. The reporter investigated the child’s
history, and ascertained that her father was dead and her mother was a
poor working woman. The girl was dressed in an old black frock. Having
completed the purchase of the girl, the reporter hastened to arrange
for her delivery anywhere and to any person designated by the committee.
[74] A committee composed of Cardinal Manning, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Bishop of London and two laymen, examined the evidence
respecting criminal vice in London, becoming satisfied that the
statements made by the “Pall Mall Gazette” were substantially true.
[75] The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon preached a powerful sermon upon the
patrician iniquity of London, comparing it to the worst sins of ancient
nations, one sure, sooner or later, to bring destruction upon both
individual and nation.
[76] When you see a girl on the street you can never say without
inquiry whether she is one of the most-to-be-condemned or the
most-to-be-pitied of her sex. Many of them find themselves where
they are because of a too trusting disposition; others are as much
the innocent victims of crime as if they had been stabbed or maimed
by the dagger of the assassin.... These women constituted a large
standing army, whose numbers no one can calculate. Gen. Booth.—_Darkest
England_, 51-56.
[77] Children as they go to and from school are waited for and watched
until the time has come for running them down.—_Report of the Secret
Commission._
[78] It seemed a strange inverted world, that in which I lived those
terrible weeks, the world of the streets and brothel. It was the
same, and yet not the same as the world of business and the world of
politics. I heard of much the same people in the house of ill-fame as
those of whom you hear in caucuses, in law courts and on ’change; but
all were judged by a different standard, and their relative importance
was altogether changed. Mr. Stead.—“Pall Mall Gazette.”
[79] _Report of Secret Commission._
[80] An immense number of public women congregated at Nice during the
time of its Historic Council, which settled the genuineness of the
books of the Bible.
[81] So fast has this class of pecuniarily independent single women
increased within the past two and a half decades, women who prefer a
single life with its personal independence, to a married life with its
legal dependence and restrictions, as to call from the “London Times”
the designation of “Third Sex.”
[82] The statistics of prostitution show that the great proportion of
those who have fallen into it have been impelled by the most extreme
poverty, in many instances verging upon starvation.—_Hist. European
Morals_, 2, 203.
[83] Belgium and Holland entered into an agreement a few years since
for its suppression.
[84] When Hon. Henry Blair presented a petition, asking for the
better protection of girls, he said: “Our civilization seems to
have developed an almost unknown phase of crime in the annals of the
race, and today the traffic in girls and young women in this country,
especially in our large cities, has come to be more disgraceful and
worse than ever was that in the girls of Circassia.”
This Christianity of ours has much to answer for.—_Woman’s Tribune._
[85] It was at one time proposed to arrest all women out alone in
the city of Syracuse, N.Y., after 9 o’clock in the evening. Had the
ordinance been enacted, a lady of mature years and position was
prepared to test its legality.
[86] Eighteen women were arrested on Monday night in the fifteenth and
twenty-ninth police precincts, and after being held in confinement over
night, were taken before Justice Duffy at the Jefferson Market Police
Court Tuesday morning.
“What were these women doing?” asked the justice.
“Nothing,” replied the officer.
“Then why did you arrest them?”
“We have to do it, sir. It is the order of the police superintendent
when we find them loitering on the streets.”—New York “Sunday Sun,”
June 28, 1885.
[87] Mr. Breen said the horrors of the camps into which these girls
are inveigled cannot be adequately described. There is no escape for
these poor creatures. In one case a girl escaped after being shot in
the leg, and took refuge in a swamp. Dogs were started on her trail,
and she was hunted down and taken back to her den. In another case a
girl escaped while a dance was going on at the shanty into which she
had been lured. After several days and nights of privation she made her
way to an island near the shore in Lake Michigan, where a man named
Stanley lived. But the dogs and human bloodhounds trailed her, Stanley
was overcome, and the girl was taken back. The law now provides for
imprisonment of only one year in case of conviction of any connection
with this traffic, and it is proposed to amend it.—_Telegraphic Report._
[88] Tales of a horrible character reach us from Michigan and other
northern lumber districts of the manner in which girls are enticed
to these places on the promise of high wages, and then subjected to
brutal outrages past description. Some three hundred of these dens are
located. These girls are sold by the keepers, passing from one den to
another, from one degree of hellish brutality to another (we beg pardon
of all brutes), all escape guarded against by ferocious bloodhounds.
The maximum of life is two months.—“Union Labor Journal.”
[89] Tony Harden used to keep dives in Norway and Quinnesic, and it is
said of him that after paying a constable $12 to bring a girl back who
had tried to escape, he beat her with a revolver until he was tired,
and was about to turn a bull-dog loose at her, when a woodsman appeared
and stopped him. The next spring Harden was elected justice of the
peace.—“Woman’s Standard.”
[90] The Rev. Mr. Kerr, of the Protestant Church, Colon, recently
discovered three young girls brought to the Isthmus for improper
purposes. He took the children away, and with the assistance of others
returned them to their parents in Jamaica.
[91] Quebec, April 11.—Wholesale trading in young and innocent girls
for purposes of prostitution has come to the notice of the authorities.
Disreputable houses in Chicago, New York, Boston and other cities in
the United States have agents here, who ingratiate themselves with
young women and induce them to go to the states, where they are drawn
into a life of infamy. The trade has been carried on to an alarming
extent, sometimes fifteen girls being shipped in a week. The prices
paid to agents depend on the looks of the girls and vary from $20 to
$200. It is stated that over fifty girls have been sent to one Chicago
house within a year.—“Daily Press.”
[92] The startling revelations within the past few days as to the
traffic at Ottawa in young girls of from 12 to 14, in which a number
of prominent citizens as well as several leading politicians are
implicated, have caused the greatest indignation. Tuesday night a
meeting was held under the auspices of the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children, with a view to devising some means by which
the great stain on the capital’s good name might be removed. It was
decided that the matter must become the subject of special legislation
at the next session of Parliament, before the guilty scoundrels can be
punished. Opposition is expected from the members of Parliament who are
implicated in the outrages.—“Daily Press.”
[93] “Topeka Leader.”
[94] In Troy, N.Y., in the fall of 1891, discovery was made of an
organized plan to ravish little girls. It numbered in its ranks married
men, members of the police force, and men well known in business and
church circles. With this discovery came the statement from other
cities that like offenders were common.—“The Daily Press.”
[95] Persistent efforts have been made by women to stop these great
wrongs, but having no power in legislation, her prayers and petitions
have met with but scant success.