HUSBANDS AND WIVES
‘The sight of this domestic misery completely appals me. I can hear no
more.’ Mr. Biron had been listening at application time to a number
of women who followed each other in quick succession, each bearing
an outward and visible sign of the fact that she had been cruelly
ill-used. Each woman was a wife, and each one wanted a ‘protection
order’ against her husband, until the experienced magistrate, rising
from his seat, declared that he could ‘stand it no longer.’
Every magistrate in London has the same experience. Some few years
ago a number of such applicants were in North London Court, and the
magistrate, with only half a look, knew what was wanted. ‘Take a
summons, take a summons,’ he cried, almost as fast as they came up.
A slip of paper was given to each, and away they went to the clerk’s
office. At length there came a nicely dressed young woman, evidently a
last year’s bride. She held her first babe at her breast. One side of
her face bore the blush of early womanhood, the other the marks of a
brutal husband’s fist. The magistrate had been signing some documents,
and had not seen her as she stood there for a few seconds. He looked
up and caught sight of the bruises. At the same time the young woman
raised her hand to her face, but could only say, ‘My husband, sir--my
husband!’ ‘What! Another of you? Take a summons; If I were to sit
here from Monday morning till Saturday to protect women that had got
drunken and brutal husbands, I should not get through half of them.’
So said Mr. Montague Williams, and he was not far wrong, for if every
magistrate were to devote his time and energies to protecting women and
putting right domestic grievances, they would not get through half of
them.
A good number of Englishmen seem to think that they have as perfect a
right to thrash or kick their wives as the American had to ‘lick his
nigger.’ Yes, and some of these fellows are completely astonished when
a magistrate ventures to hold a different opinion. I well remember a
great hulking fellow, with a leg-of-mutton fist, being charged with
assaulting a policeman. After all the evidence had been given, the
magistrate inquired whether the prisoner had been previously charged.
‘Yes, your worship, he was here two months ago, charged with assaulting
a female.’ As the prisoner declared this was false, and indignantly
denied that he had ever assaulted a female, the gaoler brought in
his book, and proved the conviction. The prisoner then looked up in
astonishment, and said: ‘Oh, why, it was only my own wife!’
Only their wives; but how those wives suffer! Is there any misery equal
to theirs, any slavery to compare with theirs? If so, I never heard of
it. I have seen thousands of them, and their existence is our shame and
degradation. These wives almost invariably have to support the husbands
that knock them about; precious little these fellows earn, and what
they do earn is spent in the public-house. Their homes--one cannot
call them homes--their abodes, often one, or at the most two rooms,
are insufferable and indescribable. How can it be otherwise, when the
slave-woman, the child-bearing machine, goes out daily to work and
wash for others? She has neither strength nor heart, and ultimately no
desire, to work, wash, or clean at home, and dirt, unspeakable dirt, is
the result. At last they become so perfect in their misery that they
never heed their foul disfigurement, but live and stew and breed in
their misery and dirt.
These wives will put up with a lot before they complain to the
magistrates, and it is only when the wounds are fresh, and pain and
resentment have not yet subsided, that they will give evidence against
their husbands. Smarting under their wrongs, they rush to our courts
and beg for protection, but when the summons has been granted and a
week has elapsed before it is heard, their resentment cools, and very
little evidence can be obtained from them; in fact, many wives do not
appear, and a great number of those that do appear lie unblushingly to
the magistrate in order to save their husbands from prison. Sometimes
these fellows have neither the grace nor the sense to see that these
poor women are perjuring themselves for their sakes, and so, with
that instinctive chivalry so characteristic of them, they proceed to
cross-examine in order to show that the blame was the wife’s, and that
the punishment she received was but fair and reasonable--in fact, the
legitimate outcome of her conduct. This often raises the last bit of
spirit the wretched woman has left in her, for even the worm will turn,
and then the truth comes out, and the slave-owner goes to prison.
I have again and again in my conversation with these fellows while
they were in the cells known them to glory in the fact, and feel
considerable consolation for going to prison in the knowledge that they
had given their wives a good showing up before the magistrate. One day
a great fellow was charged in North London with assaulting his wife.
The offence had been committed that morning. The wife had come into
the court all bleeding, for her lord and master had chastised her on
the head with a jug. The magistrate did not send the usual invitation
and give my lord a week’s notice to appear. A warrant was issued, and
before the fellow could well realize his position he was in the dock,
and his poor little wife in the witness-box. She did not say much, but
she was obliged to own that her husband had inflicted the injuries
upon her head just as she was going out to work that morning. The
fellow cross-examined in the usual manner about his wife’s tongue and
temper, and complained that there was but little breakfast for him. The
wife took it all quietly, but when the magistrate asked the prisoner
for his defence and why he hit his wife with the jug, he coolly said,
‘Well, your worship, if you lived in our house, you’d throw a jug at
her.’ ‘Why?’ ‘You send an officer over to see, and he will tell you
that he has never seen such a filthy place.’ This was more than the
battered drudge could stand, and she fairly screamed out: ‘Yes, and if
you would keep out of the public-house and go to work, I could stop at
home and clean it.’
The secret is out. Drink and idleness, drink and dirt, drink and
misery, drink and cowardly cruelty, are in close alliance. He went to
prison for three months, hard labour too, which, as the magistrate
said, would be a strange thing to him, for he had done no work since he
was last in prison. And the wife went back to the den, to her children
four, and to her daily washing. A few days before his sentence expired,
one hot afternoon in July, I called at their place, and rapped at the
door. A very little voice bade me come in, so I opened the door and
walked in.
I shall not easily forget going in. I had first to cross the room and
open the window to get some fresh air, and recover a little; then I
looked for the owner of the voice that bade me enter. I saw a pitiful
sight, but, God help us! a common one, for only too often have I seen
such. A girl of fifteen, not so heavy as a child of five ought to be,
sat on an old chair, with her feet on a rusty fender--they were on the
fender because they did not reach the floor--a poor deformed cripple,
the top of her back almost level with the top of her head; poor, thin
little legs, fingers almost like doll’s fingers, little bright eyes,
and a face as sharp as a hatchet, unable to get out of the room for any
purpose, yet left alone day after day.
An old tea-pot, some bread and margarine, some sugar in a paper, were
on a very dirty table. The whole place reeked of filth; there was
nothing of the slightest value in the place. I asked it where its
mother was. It said: ‘Out at work.’ ‘Where are the other children?’ It
supposed they were at school. I went out and got a few oranges and some
buns, and, leaving the window open, I left the poor child, asking her
to tell her mother that I would be round again in the evening.
I called at half-past eight, and found the poor woman had just arrived
home. Weary and tired out, soon again to be a mother, there in her
misery and dirt she sat. ‘It’ sat there--there on the same chair,
in the same position, feet on the fender as I had seen it in the
afternoon. The other children, who had been in and had eaten the buns
and oranges, were still running the streets. After a while they would
come in tired, have some bread and margarine, and then lie in a heap on
those rags in the corner.
It was not a nice place, but I had to stop there for a time. I knew the
husband was coming out of prison on the following Monday, and I wanted
if possible to help the woman. How to do it was a problem. On inquiry
I found that she went out to work every day and earned two shillings a
day. I told her that I should like her to do some work for me, and that
if she would stay at home, I would give her two and sixpence a day for
the remainder of the week. She wanted to know what the work was, and I
found myself in a delicate position, for I wanted to pay her to clean
her own home, and even these people are touchy if you tell them that
they are dirty. I rather pride myself on the tact I exhibited, for I
got my way. A bit of bribery and a bit of cajolery, and she agreed to
stay at home.
I was at the house early next morning, and there was a clearance. Out
went the rags and the rubbish; the ceiling was washed and whitened; the
walls were stripped and re-papered; soft soap and hot water made the
place smell fresher and purer; some linoleum on the floor improved the
look of the room. A couple of pounds renovated the whole place, and a
friend was good enough to give me some decent crockery, spoons, knives,
and forks, etc.; so the rubbish was burned.
On Monday morning I was round again early, taking with me some hot
rolls, boiled ham, coffee and butter--in fact, a decent breakfast. I
put a clean cloth on the table, a handful of flowers in a vase, saw
everything ready, and went outside and watched for him, but did not let
him see me. He was soon there, and I have always had a strong belief
that he hurried home for a row, for he had not relished his three
months. Knowing the man, I had no doubt that he would soon set to work
on the breakfast. I had put some tobacco and a pipe ready for him. I
waited for the breakfast and pipe to have its effect, and then went in.
There sat my lord, monarch of all he surveyed, blowing clouds, with
his legs comfortably stretched. He did not seem pleased to see me, and
wanted to know what I was after. I told him that I knew he would be
discharged that morning, and thought I would like to come round and see
him. Might I have a pipe with him? He pushed the tobacco towards me,
and I lit up.
The poor drudge, his wife, and his little elfish child did not know
what to think of us as we sat there smoking in silence. The fact was,
I found myself in a difficulty, for I did not know how much his wife
or child had told him about the new home and breakfast. But the brute,
having been fed, I ventured at last: ‘What a nice clean little place
you have got here!’ He looked round complacently, and said: ‘The
showing-up I gave her before the magistrate has done her a lot of good.
You should have seen it before!’ I did not know whether to smite him
or laugh. He was a big fellow, so I held my peace, for he evidently
thought his home, breakfast, etc., were the earnings of his wife. As
he clearly counted it to her for righteousness, I played the hypocrite
a bit, and to this day the fellow believes it was all his poor wife’s
doings, though he takes some credit to himself for showing her up.
What was I to do with this chivalrous gentleman? The misery of that
wife and the sufferings of the child appealed strongly to me, so I said
at length to him: ‘There’s a friend of mine will be glad if you will
work for him, as he wants just such a man as you.’ I put it gently
and as a favour, but even then it was a staggerer; it evidently was
an eventuality that he had not contemplated. He smoked on and said
nothing. I pointed out the condition of his wife, and the impossibility
of her continuing to work much longer. I plied him with more tobacco. I
told little tales to the little elf, and the little thing first laughed
and then cried, but I could not get at him. Presently he turned to his
wife and said: ‘Aren’t you going to work to-day?’ She told him it was
too late then. He smoked on. I was just thinking of leaving, when he
suddenly said: ‘Where is this work?’ I told him. He put on his cap, and
said he would go and see what it was. I offered to go with him; but he
said he would not have anybody from the police court ‘messing about’
after him, so I gave him a note, and sure enough he went and he worked.
I arranged with his employer not to ‘sub’ him during the week, but
every night the brute had a decent supper at my expense. I even
prevailed on him to allow me to loan him a few shillings for his
current expenses day by day, and so at work he was able to have his
pipe and jingle a few coppers in his pocket. He worked all the week,
and Saturday (pay-day) came round, about which I was doubtful. I knew
what time he would be paid. I had noticed he had some conceit, so I
sent up to him at his work a note asking him to see me at his home
at half-past two, as I had an important matter on which I wanted his
advice. I did not say what it was, but I had saved it up for the
purpose.
I found him at home. As the wife let me in at the door, she silently
opened her hand and showed me a sovereign in gold and two half-crowns.
I could have cried, but I did not: I went in. ‘Here’s the three
shillings you lent me.’ I took them as a matter of course, telling him
if he wanted to borrow a shilling or two at any time I would lend them
to him. He never said that he had given his wife twenty-five shillings,
and I never mentioned it. He felt pleased that he did not owe me
anything, and I felt pleased that he should think so.
We had a pipe together, and discussed the elf, for I had made
arrangements for the little thing to have a few weeks at the seaside,
and I thought it better for her to be away during the wife’s coming
trouble. We arranged it nicely, and the child heard the voice of the
big waters for the first time, and she had another little brother when
she came back.
I always had a strong aversion to this man, but I continued to visit
the home week by week, for which visits I had always to find some
plausible excuse. I could see that he suspected me, and looked at me
with a cunning eye. I found afterwards that he thought I was watching
him, and believed that I should give evidence against him in case
he ill-used his wife again. I encouraged this belief, for it helped
to protect the wife, and he kept to his work. He got more comfort
and better food, for the way to this man’s brain--I won’t say his
heart--was through his stomach. Tracts and good advice, pleading or
rebuke, would have been useless with him; I had to take him as he was.
He was an animal, as an animal I had to treat him, and, the professor
notwithstanding, I did not make a very bad job of him, for he keeps to
work and keeps his hands off his wife, for which two things husband and
wife are the better.
Such husbands and such wives exist by the thousand. Stand outside our
public-houses and take stock. You see a number of men, young and of
middle age, loafing about, propping up the outside walls, waiting to
be treated. Invariably these have wretched drudges of wives, whose
lives and homes cannot be described. Hundreds of such fellows find
their way into our courts. In the cells I see and speak to them, and
am frequently asked to go to the places where their wives are at work,
and get them to raise or borrow enough money to pay their fines. I
have some comfort in thinking that I have never helped to shorten
by one hour the imprisonment these fellows so richly deserve. This
wife-beating among a certain class is so common that I have found
plenty of wives who take it as a perfect matter of course, and some do
not mind very much unless they are seriously damaged. But there are
others with whom it is far different; and this leads me to speak of
another class among whom I have found agony and anxiety, suffering and
hopelessness, that cannot be imagined.
Their homes are clean, nay, often refined, and comfortable; the women
do not go out to work, and, unless absolutely in fear of their lives,
they do not charge their husbands. But those husbands get charged for
other offences, and I have made the acquaintance of numbers whose homes
I have visited, and have found the lowest hell of misery, fear, and
despair. I now refer to men who have to live by their brains and not
by their muscles, but about whose brain there is something wrong--but
what, no living man can tell. They can do severe mental work at great
pressure; they are valuable servants, and keep their positions for
years; but let them have one dose of alcohol, and their brain is
completely unhinged; they become transformed into ‘wolf or tiger, hog
or bearded goat,’ and all the devilish passions that can inhabit man
are roused into active fury. Smash goes the furniture, sewing-machines
and everything; away go the little ones to hide themselves. Woe be to
the wife if she interferes! and, if she does not, horrible language,
filthy accusations, and murderous threats are heard for hours. I have
gone into many houses of this description, and have had to pick my
way through the ruins of the home. I have seen the wives--educated
women--crouching in a corner, and little ones have crept from their
hiding-places and sought shelter behind me. I have stood in front of
these men, and have been horribly afraid for my own safety, for with a
poker or hatchet in his hand, a man of this kind needs wary dealing.
I know these men are mad, but I know that no doctor will certify them
as such. I know their madness takes one form--jealousy of the innocent
wife. So again and again, when I have been called into such homes,
have I had to play the hypocrite and humour his delusion; to have done
otherwise would have been madness.
Many a time I have said, ‘What! has she been at it again? Tell me all
about it. Will you have a cigar?’ Hour after hour I have sat among the
débris of the home, hearing, but not listening to, the accusations
of the husband, for I have been thinking of the cowering wife in the
corner and the terrified children behind me. But to watch the faces
of these men, to see the gradations of passion, and the extraordinary
change of facial expression, has not been a pleasant task. Yet I have
sat on and on, watching for signs of exhausted nature, or hoping and
waiting for some sign that alcohol had done its worst. And they come
at length, for the physical strain upon such a man is intense. The
wife and her children go to one bedroom and fasten the door. I get
the poor fellow to another, see him into bed, leave a little light in
a safe place, promise to see him on the morrow, and come away with
the words, ‘Mr. Holmes, I won’t kill her to-night,’ in my ears and in
my mind; for often have these words been said to me as I have left
the room of such a man. On the morrow these men know nothing of what
transpired the night before. They feel dazed, ill, and miserable, but
memory is to them a blank. God help them and their poor wives, for,
alas! no one else can help them. Magistrates and police can do nothing
for them, human sympathy is helpless before them. Temperance pledges
and tracts are worse than useless, for who or what can minister to a
mind diseased? Drink in their case is only a symptom of a deeper-seated
trouble. Cruelty in their case is not a natural condition but the
outcome of their delusions. From these come the reports of many
startling tragedies of murder and suicide. Of these I have saved none,
but among these I have given myself, and am glad to think that I have
often, at any rate, prevented worse happening.
The well-paid artisan class furnish not a few wife-beating cases,
caused not by mental disease, nor yet by innate cruelty, but by regular
and systematic drunkenness. These men work regularly, or nearly so,
during the week, but Saturday brings to their families only added
misery and sufferings, and Sunday no peace or rest. The scope for
missionary work among such is very great, as one or two examples shall
show.
On Easter Sunday six years ago a man lay drunk on his bed. The house
in which he lived with his wife and family almost closed up to one of
our large and popular churches, for the rolling of the organ and the
glad strains of the _Te Deum_ could be heard in their rooms. As the
man lay there, his wife, a big-eyed and big-hearted woman, sat on a
chair contemplating him. It was the twenty-first anniversary of their
wedding. Twenty-one years before she had looked forward to married
joys and domestic comforts, but twenty years of sorrow and suffering,
unceasing toil, and untold cruelties had been her lot.
Presently there was a loud scream, but the man lay still. A woman,
however, from another room ran in, and saw the wife holding a bottle
that had evidently contained poison. She ran to the man, shook him
violently, and called out: ‘Get up! Get up! Your wife has taken poison’
‘Let her die, then! Let her die!’ was the only response. A doctor close
by was fetched, and he shook the man, but got the same reply: ‘Let
her die, then! Let her die!’ Emetics were procured, the stomach-pump
applied, and the woman was carried by the police to the nearest
infirmary. I heard, of the case, and I knew she would, as soon as
possible, be charged with attempted suicide, so I went to see her. As I
sat by her bedside in the infirmary, the story of the years came out.
Her joy had been all bitterness, for the love she hoped for had turned
to cruelty. Children had been born to her, but every child meant extra
work and misery.
In a fortnight’s time she stood in the dock, and the evidence of the
woman and doctor was taken. The husband was in court, and heard his own
words, ‘Let her die! Let her die!’ repeated by both witnesses. There
stood the big-eyed woman, silent and sorrowful, for not a word could be
got from her. But there was a daughter in court who was not disposed to
be silent, and she came forward to tell of her mother’s toil and pains,
and of her father’s drunkenness and cruelty. And the big-eyed woman
looked pleadingly at her, as if to tell her to hold her peace.
The husband was called up, and asked by the magistrate whether the
evidence given by his daughter was true. He replied: ‘Some of it.’
The woman was remanded for a week, and I was asked to make some
arrangement for her. I found the husband earned good wages, and the
only arrangement I could think of was an agreement between them for
a separation, the wife to have a weekly allowance from him. This he
agreed to, and was willing that his wife should have the home, he
promising also to allow her fifteen shillings per week, to be paid to
me. This arrangement met with the approval of the magistrate, who, on
the remand, accepted sureties for the wife and let her go.
I got the agreement legally drawn, and wrote for the husband to meet me
at the wife’s home to sign it. I took witnesses with me, and none of
us are likely to forget what followed. I read the agreement, and the
man signed it. I put the pen into the woman’s hand, and tremblingly but
silently she signed it. The man put fifteen shillings on the table,
saying: ‘Here is your first week’s money.’ Then she stood up and looked
him through and through. All the wrongs and disappointments of her
married life were concentrated in her eyes, and he quailed before her.
For a moment she stood, and then, with a sweep of her hand, she sent
the money flying over the room, almost screaming: ‘Take your money!
Take your money! Give me back my twenty-one years!’
As the man went down the stairs she stood over him, and the cry
followed him--‘Give me back my twenty-one years!’ Week by week I
carried the fifteen shillings to her, but no comfort could I give to
her. I sent her to the seaside, and she came back none the better. Hope
was not for her, and in a few months the gates of a lunatic asylum
closed upon her. But that fearful cry for the lost years rang ever in
the husband’s ears. His wife being in the asylum, he had to look after
the children or go to prison; he had even to contribute to his wife’s
support. So he had to drink less, and, drinking less, he became more
human and a better parent. Twelve months passed away, and the gates
of the asylum were opened to her; and he went to receive her and to
take her home. There, with her children about her, she still lives, a
great-eyed, sad-faced woman. No thrilling joy is hers; her heart and
pulses never bound with it, for the sufferings of those years cannot be
forgotten, the effects of them cannot be wiped out, but she has home
comfort, if nothing more; for with the absence of drink there is the
absence of cruelty. And after the darkness and storms of the mid-day
of her life, I humbly hope there may be the quiet after-glow of the
evening; and when time has laid its healing touch upon her poor, sore
heart, the heart that yearned for love and sympathy may in some measure
be compensated, and a chastened happiness be her lot.
A volume itself would fail me to tell half the stories of tragedy and
pathos connected with this branch of my work. At many an inquest, if
the dead could speak or the suicide come to life, worse tales would
be told; for, broken in health of body and mind, with every nerve
shattered, with not a spark of hope in their hearts, many women seek
to end their sufferings by death. Numbers of such women are rescued
from it, and are charged with attempted suicide before our magistrates.
Sometimes it has been a half-hearted attempt; at others a determined
attempt; sometimes, dazed and half conscious, in a helpless, hopeless
kind of way they have sought their doom, at other times with fury and
despair, and others still with cool, calculating determination. But,
whatever the method or the mode, when the law has released its hold
upon them, such poor creatures become a sacred charge upon the police
court missionary. There is only one way of ‘giving Christ’ to these,
and it means weeks or months of kindly sympathy and the consecration
of brain and self. I do not for one moment wish it inferred that most
of our female ‘attempted suicides’ are driven to it by their husbands’
drunkenness or cruelty, for this is not so; but quite a number of
them are, and a sufficient number to make them an important part of
any police court missionary’s work--at any rate, they have been an
important part of my work.
The sufferings of married women at length got some attention from the
State, and in 1895 a law was passed, or rather an addition was made to
an old law, for the purpose of affording them protection and giving
them some relief.
As soon as this Act came into force our police courts became thronged
with women applying for protection. Briefly the Act provides that any
woman having a persistently cruel husband may leave him, and, having
left him, may then apply to the magistrate within whose jurisdiction
she lives for a summons against her husband for separation and
maintenance. These the magistrate is empowered to grant, provided the
woman proves her case, that the cruelty has been persistent. An order
being made upon the husband, he must pay or go to prison. A large
number of women have been protected by this Act; men have learned the
power of the Act, and many have found to their cost that cruelty to
a wife does not go unpunished. They have found, too, that they must
either work or starve, and that, having wives, they must either
support them or go to prison, and in some degree, though only a small
degree, women have been protected.
But what of the husbands who are possessed of drunken wives? Alas!
there is no relief for them; the law moves not its finger to help them.
Though their goods and clothes are pawned, though their children be
neglected, and though their homes be turned into veritable hells, the
law gives them no hope, the State no redress. Again and again strong,
honest, industrious men come into our courts seeking the magistrate’s
help and counsel, telling the same old tale, exposing the same old
sorrow, and the magistrate has no help to give, no counsel to impart.
Letter after letter I receive, some badly written, many badly spelt,
but letters which for absolute pathos could not be surpassed. Plead
with these women, and it is like preaching a sermon to an east wind.
Reason with them, and they will make worse appear the better reason,
for they lie with impunity, and one and all declare they are the
aggrieved and their husbands are the guilty parties. Stupendous are
their lies, and yet I feel certain that many believe what they assert.
I have taken much knowledge of these women, and have come to the
opinion that drunkenness is often but a symptom of some deeper
cause. At one time I had persuaded some half-dozen of such to agree
to separate from their husbands, who every week sent to me the sum
agreed on for their maintenance. I used to call on these women, give
them their week’s money, find them a little work, and do them any
kindness I possibly could. I am not likely to repeat that experiment,
for I confess myself beaten; they were too much for me, and so far
as I know I was powerless to influence them for good. I never could
find out whether their peculiar mental condition was due to drink, or
their drinking was due to their mental condition, and either way I was
helpless. But I have met with some magnificent devotion on the part
of husbands, and a love passing even the love of women. I will give
but one instance of this, and although it had a sad ending, yet it
illustrates my statement.
‘A SCENE IN A POLICE COURT--A PAINFUL CASE.’
These words headed a paragraph of police news in the daily papers
one morning in June. But the few commonplace words that told the
story gave no idea of the intense suffering. Four weeks before an old
sorrowful-faced man had tremblingly stood in the dock charged with a
violent assault upon his wife. Four times he had been assisted back to
the cells. Four times in the cupboard of the prison van had he been
conveyed to the house of detention, for his wife lay hovering between
life and death in the infirmary. ‘Erysipelas had set in,’ said the
doctor. On the fifth occasion she was just well enough to come, and was
carried into court, her head bandaged all over, one arm in a sling, and
her face all covered with cuts and bruises. A chair was placed for her
before the magistrate, and she was called on for evidence. ‘I don’t
know much about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him punished; he has been
a good husband to me; I suppose he did it; if he did, it was my fault,
for I was drunk at the time.’
Not another word could be got from her. The landlady was called, and
said: ‘These people have lived with me for a long time. A better man
never lived; a worse woman could not be found. She has sold or pawned
all his goods time after time. She has been in prison again and again.
Many a time the prisoner has spent the night looking for his wife, and
once brought her home dead drunk on a wheelbarrow; he had found her
in a dustbin. On the present occasion she had only been a week out
of prison, where she had been for two months. During that time the
prisoner, who is a basket-maker, had got a new home together, had made
it very nice, and went to meet her at the prison. When she got home,
and saw how nice it was, she promised never to drink again; but during
the week she pawned many of the things, and when the prisoner came home
on Saturday she was lying drunk in her rooms. He had a walking-stick in
his hand, and as he passed my door I said, “Your wife has been at it
again.” Presently I heard screams and cries of “Murder!” The prisoner
came down and said, “Good-bye; you will never see me again.” Thinking
he was going to commit suicide, I followed him, and told a policeman,
who took him into custody. When we got back to the room, we found the
woman lying in a pool of blood on the floor, and the stick lying beside
her.’
On being asked for his defence, every eye in the court was turned on
the old man. ‘I can only plead great provocation, and call witnesses as
to my character,’ he said, in quavering tones. ‘Thirty-five years we
have been man and wife; twenty-five years she has been an inveterate
drunkard, yet, as God is my Judge, I have never struck her before. She
has ruined my home many times; she has been in prison a score of times.
I had to send my two boys away from home to be away from her influence.
I used to go round to where they lived and mend their clothes myself
after I had done work. My friends wanted me to leave her, my sons
wanted me to go and live with them; but I always said, “She is your
mother, and she will alter yet.” When I came home on that Saturday and
saw my home again broken up, and her lying drunk on the bed, with the
pawn-tickets round her, I was mad. If ever a man was mad, I was mad.
All the wrongs I had suffered for twenty-five years came before me, and
I was mad. I struck her I don’t know how many times with that stick.
That is all I can say, sir, and that is the truth, God help us!’
His employer then came forward, stating that he had known the prisoner
from boyhood. They were apprenticed together, and for several years he
had employed him. The prisoner’s devoted love for the wretched woman
was the marvel of all who knew him. He had personally and frequently
pleaded of him to give her up and go to live with his sons, who were
anxious to find a home for him; but he had always refused. Two sons
came forward and told the story of their father’s devotion and their
mother’s shame, and begged piteously that their father might not be
punished. They would be bail for him; they would take him home with
them; they would look after him.
There was a breathless silence in court while waiting for the
magistrate’s decision, and down the cheeks of many present tears were
stealing; even the court officials, case-hardened as they must become,
looked very moist about the eyes. The magistrate said: ‘Prisoner,
this is a terrible assault. It is only by God’s mercy that you are
not standing there charged with murder. You ought to have left this
wretched woman long ago. I can’t give you less than six months’
imprisonment.’
A scene followed that I shall not easily forget. An involuntary groan
passed through the court. The two sons rushed forward in front of the
magistrate, saying: ‘Oh, for God’s sake don’t say that! don’t say
that! He’ll never come out alive! He’ll never come out alive!’ The old
man was taken to his cell, the sons went outside, and I went to try
to comfort them--a vain task, for they were wringing their hands, and
the cry like a sorrowful refrain came from them: ‘He’ll never come out
alive! He’ll never come out alive!’
And the old woman went to the workhouse, the sons to their home, and
the old man to his prison. There was no light at eventide for them,
no glow after the sunset for the old couple, for in six months’ time
a white-haired old man, bent and broken, was met at the prison gates
by his two sons, who took him home with them. Every month an old woman
from the workhouse was locked up for drunkenness, charged in the same
dock where the sorrowful-faced old man had stood, and received her
usual short term of imprisonment. And the old man reaped not the fruit
of his long years of patient endurance, beautiful faith and marvellous
devotion, for death soon came to him, and no wife was present to close
his eyes. And when she shortly afterwards died in the workhouse there
were no sons present to bid her a long farewell.
The law ought to give such men redress. ‘Sauce for the goose’ is not
yet ‘sauce for the gander.’ A battered wife may claim and get the
assistance the law has wisely provided. Husbands of habitually drunken
wives ought to have, and it is monstrous that they do not have, equal
rights and privileges. The Habitual Inebriates Act of 1898 does not
apply to these women; it only applies to women charged four times in
one year. But the women charged four times in one year are--at least,
eighty per cent. are--homeless ‘unfortunates,’ victims, not of drink,
but of sensuality or of mental disease. These a kind Government has
provided for, and offers ten and sixpence per week for a period not
exceeding three years and not less than one to such philanthropic
societies, public bodies and private individuals who will undertake
to care for them. County Councils in their turn are also willing to
supplement the Government grant by a contribution of six and sixpence
per week for such ‘habitual inebriates’ as shall be charged or
committed within their jurisdiction.
Here, then, is an extraordinary position. Unspeakably gross women are
cared for; idleness, sensuality, or dementia are treated as inebriety;
the public are taxed or rated to the extent of seventeen shillings per
week for everyone committed to an inebriate reformatory. These, after
their one, two, or three years’ detention have passed, will come back
to their old haunts, their old vice, and their old shame. They have
already begun to do so. But the really inebriate go uncared for, and
from thousands of homes comes the despairing cry for help. From good
husbands and loving fathers, from neglected children in blighted homes,
the sorrowful cry goes up unto Heaven; and the wreckage of such homes
is all about us. But to all this the law has nothing to say unless the
wretched woman gets charged four times in one year. Surely, if it is
right--and it is right--that a down-trodden wife should be protected,
it is equally right and just, nay, it is absolutely imperative, that
a husband should have some means of obtaining redress--some chance of
lightening his heavy burden. Hundreds of husbands bear this kind of
life till they can bear it no longer, and they take themselves off,
leaving their wives and families to be cared for by the parish, and
the law is set in motion to find them, for many are brought back and
punished. Many bear with this life till maddened nature can stand it
no longer, and a violent assault ensues, followed by prosecution and
imprisonment.
The wife may summon the husband. Why may not the husband summon the
wife? If a wife commits a certain offence once, though in every other
respects she may be a decent woman, the law is outraged and society
scandalized, so much so, that the husband is entitled to cast her
off. But a lifetime of wifely drunkenness, of horrible dirt, of
insensate waste and utter neglect, are at present not worth a moment’s
consideration. These are the women who ought to be the inmates of our
inebriate reformatories, and numbers of husbands would be only too glad
to pay reasonable sums for their detention and treatment. Let the State
keep and control its criminal inebriates, and treat them scientifically
for whatever may be the matter with them. Private individuals or
philanthropic societies will not be able to do much with them or for
them; but they might do much for drunken wives if those wives were
committed to their care.
We have heard so much of women’s rights that there is a danger of the
rights of men being overlooked, so on their behalf I contend that the
sober husband of a drunken wife should have the power of summoning her
before the magistrate, when, if it is proved that she is persistently
drunken, the magistrate shall have the power of committing her for
not less than a year to some certified inebriate reformatory; and
at the same time an order should be made upon the husband for a
weekly contribution towards his wife’s support while she is in the
reformatory. Wives know only too well that the law will not interfere
with them for home drunkenness. They are perfectly aware that they can
snap their fingers at the husband, police, or magistrate, and, knowing
this, many of them are quite content to live in filth and misery. Happy
would it be for them if they were for a time taken out of that misery;
great would be the relief to many decent husbands, while untold numbers
of children would be infinitely happier. Sober, industrious people have
rights as well as drunkards, and it is high time the State considered
those rights--high time, too, that the State considered the wrongs
inflicted on itself by such drunkenness, for, though the State at
present does not care, it is not let off easily. It has to pay, and the
penalty is a heavy one.