“Because that day she got locked up for being drunk and disorderly, and I
never knew until now where she got the money.”
This is by no means an isolated case. I have been several times applied
to by quite respectable men whose wives had run up debts with as many
as twelve to nineteen different drapers for relief under the power
permitting of small bankruptcies. One man told me he was putting a
nail in the wall, and on moving a picture he found some County Court
summonses. I asked him what he did.
“I upbraided my wife,” he replied, in a rather melancholy tone, “and she
ran away, and I have never seen her since.”
A creditor corroborated the fact, and it was clear that debt had
destroyed that household. The man had no idea that there were any debts
owing, they had been hidden from him, but he thought it right to arrange
honestly enough to pay them all off. Many a man removes, or has his house
sold over his head, or his wife leaves him through misunderstanding
arising out of credit recklessly given for useless articles, and the law
as it stands encourages this kind of thing.
Nor can it be said that the wife is always to blame. The husband finds
that his wife can obtain credit at any grocer’s for the week’s food,
and the necessity of carrying home his wages to the chancellor of his
domestic exchequer is less apparent. The temptation to spend wages on
drink or gambling is distinctly encouraged in the debtor of to-day by a
system that makes credit so readily obtainable by the unthrifty and unfit.
There was a story illustrating this aspect of the matter told me by a
member of a relief committee during the late war. The committee were
paying women half wages whilst the men were at the front. The wife of a
working-man refused a sovereign saying, “That ain’t half my man’s wages.”
It was explained that he earned forty shillings.
The honest woman shook her head. “Nay, he didn’t,” she said. “Nowt o’
sort. He never earned more than twenty-five. Twenty-three he give me, and
two shillings spending money.”
After some time and examination of the books, the good lady was convinced
that she was entitled to a sovereign, and she went away aghast at her
husband’s deceit, and murmured, “Eh, but if yon Boers don’t kill him,
wait till I get him back!”
One reason why imprisonment should be abolished in relation, at all
events, to amounts under forty shillings is the dangerous and slippery
paths of evidence along which a Judge has to walk in dealing with
small cases. Some witnesses have not the remotest idea of their duties
and responsibilities. On one occasion a low-class Jewish workman was
sufficiently impressed with his responsibilities to make the following
demand after he was sworn.
“My lort, I cannot be a vitness in this case.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Don’t you know anything about it?”
“Oh, yes, I know all about it, but I don’t vant to speak.”
After a good deal of trouble I obtained from him the reason of his
reticence.
“You see,” he said, “Moses (the plaintiff) is mine brother-in-law, and
little Isaac (the defendant) he is mine vife’s nephew, and if I speak
about this case, vy, I must give vun of them avay.”
I condoled with him about his family difficulties, and tried to persuade
him that his duty was to speak the truth, but my only recollection of his
evidence is that it was of no service to anyone, and that he certainly
succeeded in giving himself away.
In a family dispute the greatest care must be taken to accept nothing as
true that can possibly be prompted by hatred or malice. To do justice
to the Jews they do not, as a rule, bring family disputes into court. A
cynical registrar once told me that a Jew would swear anything for his
brother, and a Christian anything against his brother. Without endorsing
this epigrammatic exaggeration, I must sorrowfully admit that a downright
North Country fight between blood relations over club money or the cost
of a funeral tea or the furniture of a deceased parent is one of the
saddest exhibitions of uncharitableness that I know.
The recklessness with which good ladies of unblemished character will
commit what technical-minded lawyers might be inclined to consider
perjury, and on occasion even stoop to something like forgery, would
surprise anyone who was not conversant with it. In ordinary matters
these good people are honest citizens enough, but in a family dispute
honour requires that no iniquity must be left undone in order to gain the
day. I remember in my early days a fat old dame of cheerful countenance
suing her son-in-law, a young workman, for £2 17s. 9d. The odd shillings
and pence were admitted, but the £2, which figured through two or three
greasy books as “ballanse of account,” could not be traced to any
particular source.
The old lady swore it was a grocery account. The young man denied it with
emphasis, and said it was spite. Sarah, the old lady’s elder daughter,
remembered some of the items of it, and with a great relish swore to them
in detail. The young wife, who had been keeping a very lively baby quiet,
and trying in between whiles to give evidence from the body of the court,
at last got into the witness-box. Flinging the baby into her husband’s
arms, and kissing the book with a smack, she shot out the following
testimony at her mother and myself: “Look ’ere, mother, you know reet
enow what that there balance is; it ain’t no balance at all—it’s my ’at
and the wedding-dress, and the shoes to match, and the pair o’ greys
what druv us to church, which I paid for when I was in service for three
years, putting by ’arf-a-crown a month, which mother kep’ for me, and
well she knows it, which it’s Sarah’s spite as ain’t got married yet.”
What was the real truth may be doubtful, but I was clear the “ballanse
of account” was not groceries, and struck it out; yet, had the mother
succeeded, she would have pursued her son-in-law to prison in an
endeavour to collect the money.
For my part I think it is bad business for the community that homes
should be broken up in order that a creditor may collect a trumpery debt
that should never have been incurred, and it is because I believe it is
the interest of the State to keep together the home of the working-man,
and to deliver him from temptation, that I hope to see imprisonment
for debt diminished, if not abolished altogether. An intelligent
landlord wishing to preserve game kills off birds of prey and puts down
poachers. An intelligent State, if it wishes to preserve the home of the
working-man and his wife and children, should make it illegal for him to
mortgage his future earnings, and to place his liberty in jeopardy in
order to possess for the moment some shoddy piece of jewellery or drapery
for which he has no real use.