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. The jury acquitted promptly, as directed.
To such extent is this abuse of woman under law as to have called forth a vigorous article in the Westminister Review, 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
The Ducking Stool 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 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.
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. 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. 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 in the market place was by no means uncommon during the early part of the century in England. Ashton 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. 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. 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:
The National Woman Suffrage Association, through this committee, respectfully present to you a protest against that clause of the anti-polygamy measure passed by congress, which, whether in the Edmunds bill of the senate or the Tucker substitute of the house, disfranchises the non-polygamous women of Utah.
The clause relating to the disfranchisement of women has no bearing on the general merits of the end sought to be attained by the measure, since Mormon men are the majority of the voters of the territory.
The non-polygamous women of Utah have committed no crime. Disfranchisement is reserved by the United States government for arch traitors. Justice forbids that such a penalty should be inflicted on innocent women.
Non-polygamous Mormon women and the Christian women of Utah being thus disfranchised—the former for their opinions and the latter for the opinions of the former—a precedent is established subversive of the fundamental principles of our government, and threatening the security of all citizens.
If congress deems it necessary to disfranchise citizens because of injurious beliefs, discrimination between sexes is manifestly unjust.
It has been held by the foremost statesmen of the nation that the right of suffrage once exercised, becomes a vested right which cannot be taken away. Gratz Brown once said, in the senate of the United States, that if the idea that suffrage could be taken away at pleasure once crystallized in the minds of the people, it would “ring the death knell of American liberty.” Mr. Vest, of Missouri, on the 25th day of this month, said, on the floor of the senate: “Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do everything else; they never can do that. When any particular class or fraction of the community is once invested with this privilege it is fixed, accomplished and eternal.”
Thus every argument for justice, equal legislation and the safety of our republican form of government calls for the defeat of this clause.
We, therefore, respectfully urge you, as guardian of the rights of all American citizens, to veto any measure coming before you which disfranchises the women of Utah.
Lillie Devereux Blake,
Matilda Joslyn Gage,
Caroline Gilkey Rogers,
Mary Seymour Howell,
Clara B. Colby,
Sarah Miller,
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert,
Harriette R. Shattuck,
Louisa Southworth,
Committee
This memorial, supplemented by personal argument from the committee demonstrating the political dangers connected with such a denial of vested rights, together with the greater injustice of punishing women for the crimes of men, was met by reply of the President that as great changes were frequently made in bills before their final passage, he had as yet not given the subject much thought; promising, however to give it his fullest attention whenever brought before him. The method taken by the president to avoid responsibility of decision, is notable as he neither signed nor vetoed the bill, but allowed it to become law through such non-action. Crimes of omission being parallel with those of commission, the women of the United States can but hold Grover Cleveland equally guilty with the XLIX Congress in punishing women for the crimes of men.
The Code of England, from which that of the United States is largely borrowed, was the outgrowth of Christianity, based upon a belief in man’s superiority and woman’s subordination to him as entering every relation of life. All legislation was class; the line was sex. During the early and middle ages man exhibited an antagonism towards woman, which if not wholly created by religious belief was strenuously fostered by the church. Man’s basest passion, love of power, was appealed to and he was assured by what he had been trained to regard as indisputable authority, that God had ordained his rule over woman. A quick response met all such priestly teaching. Christianity has ever been a religion of the emotions rather than of the reason. The former was cultivated; the latter bitterly condemned. The church has ever found its most powerful enemy in reason, hence the exercise of reason has ever been a crime in her eyes.
During the Christian ages the different code of morals for man and woman has created infinite wrong. Open and notorious vice among both churchmen and laymen passed unreproved, but an heiress forfeited her possessions by unchastity, and wily plans were laid to thus gain possession of her property, the betrayer receiving payment from the guardian, whose tool he was, for his perfidy. To this moral code we trace the present legal condition of girls, daughters having no status in the courts in case of betrayal. The father alone, as master and owner, can sue for loss of her services, while the injury to herself is passed by, even upon so momentous a question as the paternity of a child born out of wedlock.
Many of the most flagrant wrongs perpetrated against woman can be traced to a denial of a right of ownership, beginning with the denial of her right to herself. Even the Salic law which in France was used to bar the succession of woman to the throne, was not specifically or primarily in favor of males; it was a property law growing out of the patriarchal idea of property in woman. Under Christian form of marriage, woman was transferred to another family whose name she took. She not only became the property of her husband but all real or personal estate which she possessed, also became his. Thus her property went to the enrichment of another family. Her home was no longer with her own people, but where her husband chose to make it. Salic law derived its name from Sala, a house. Salic land, said Montesquieu, was the land belonging to the house. At time of its adoption the line of descent was male. Under it during the middle ages when a daughter married, she received merely a chaplet of roses. Thenceforth, her interests were elsewhere, and her children became part of another family; she was entirely lost to the family of her birth. As she was no longer a part of it she did not receive inheritance. “It was not a subject of affection but gens.”
Guizot with a fine sense of irony, termed Salic law essentially a penal code. Its application to woman was incontestibly penal. In France its action has been most pronounced. Robertson speaks of the Salic law as the most venerable monument of French jurisprudence, although the real period of its birth has never yet been fully acknowledged. While during the struggle of Phillippa de Valours, and Edward III for the crown of France, this law was invoked to prevent the succession of Phillippa, yet we know that in Gaul during the time of Caesar, mothers had sole authority over their children, even boys remaining in entire charge of the mother until old enough for instruction in arms. Wives also possessed property rights, upon marriage the husband adding the same amount of property he had received with his wife. This was kept as a separate fund, the survivor taking the whole. Hallum designated the contest between Phillippa and Edward as in every way remarkable, but especially on account of its result in the exclusion of woman from the succession, then first suggested. It was the Latin races rather than the Scandinavian or Teutonic that first essentially degraded woman. The Riparian Franks, pre-eminent as lovers of liberty, were the first who broke away from the rule of this law. Both the Scandinavians and Teutons possessed prophetic women or priestesses to whom the highest deference was shown. The Teutonic races were early noted for the high respect in which they held women, a respect closely bordering upon veneration. The greatest deference was shown to their opinions even upon war, the chief business of men’s lives. Victoria received the title of “Mother of Camps,” and was an especially venerated person. Veleda by superior genius, directed the counsels of the nation and for nine years prevented the progress of the imperial armies of Rome. The most momentous questions of state and of religion were submitted to woman’s divine judgment.
The relation between the wrongs of woman and her non-ownership of property, and of herself, are very complicated. The custom of Marquette originated from the theory of property in woman; the Suzerain or lord possessing not only a certain property right in his male vassals, but a double right to the woman who as a bride became the property of his vassal. Thus Marquette was the outgrowth of the husband’s property right in his wife, and a secondary result of man’s assumed right of property in woman. In France, where the Salic law possessed greatest strength we find the custom of marquette most prevalent. Next to marquette, the law known as “Mund” or “Mundium” offered the greatest indignity to woman, and in some respects may be called more vile. While the baseness of marquette took its victims from a class beneath the lord in social standing, Mundium entered the family, the father selling his daughter to such wooer as he chose, or from whom he received the greatest payment, entirely regardless of the wishes of the daughter herself. The Salic law seemed to have been founded on the principle of the Mund, as under it a sum was paid by the husband to the family of the bride in consideration of the transference of the authority they possessed over her, to the husband, and this payment was known as “Mundium” and the bride as a “Mund” bought woman. In Denmark, to which country the custom of mundium extended, her appellation was “mundikeypt-krom,” signifying a mund bought woman. At that period descent was reckoned from the father, to whom alone the children were held to be related, and his relinquishment of authority by sale of his daughter, transferred her relationship from her father to her husband, and she thus became a component part of another family. She no longer belonged to the family of her birth, but to that of her purchaser. The Franks were the first to break Salic customs and to permit a father to settle an estate upon his daughter and her children. Under the law of Gavelkind as it existed in Great Britain, daughters never inherited, although the rights of even an illegitimate son was recognized as equal to those of legitimate sons. By the laws of gavelkind, property could not descend to women, but the County of Kent possessed more freedom than in any other part of England. There was a custom of privilege annexed to all lands of this kind in Kent, among them, that the wife should be endowed with a moiety; gavelkind land was devisable by will. Ordinarily in gavelkind, property was kept in male hands, descending from father to son. The very name gavelkind is said to bear this signification, the word Kynd is dutch signifying a male child, thus gife eal cyn, means give all to the son. Its modern signification is the custom of partition of property among males alone, or the greatest share to the oldest son.
Lord Coke looked upon the practice of gavelkind among the Irish as a mark of their descent from the ancient Britons. At this period wives were not entitled to dower, thus in respect to property, all women of the family were equally disinherited. But it was the opinion of Lord Holt that by the Common Law, both before and after the conquest, all the children, both male and female inherited both the real and the personal estate, and in like proportion. But in the reign of Henry I daughters, in case there were sons, began to be excluded from the real estate. These laws, so essentially Salic, it can readily be seen, originated in the mundium. Passing as a mund woman, into another family, the succession of property to her under this slave condition, was contrary to sound domestic policy. To bestow property upon a daughter was to enrich another family at the expense of the one from whom the slave-wife was purchased, and her disinheritance was but a logical result of her legal condition. If we admit the premises we must admit the wisdom of her exclusion from succession.
It is curious to note the difference in woman’s position which possession of property has ever made. This difference especially noticeable during Feudalism in case of an heiress with fiefs, is no less so at the present day. It is a mark of an unripe civilization that the rights of property have ever been regarded before those of person. Walker over sixty years since, recognized the power of property in ameliorating woman’s condition, then declaring that the first step toward an acknowledgment of her equality, must be a recognition of her rights of property; his broad knowledge of ancient law having taught him the close connection of property rights and personal rights. During many ages battle was done for possessions and the protection of what a man owned. Even the war of the American Revolution was begun for property rights rather than for those of person. The Stamp Act and the tax on tea roused the Colonies to resistance. A woman first spoke the words “inherent rights,” and by the time nationality was proclaimed the colonists had learned far enough to say that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Consent is an important consideration in all questions affecting humanity, and is one in which woman is most deeply concerned. At close of the civil war Frederick Douglass advised colored men to get property. He had not failed to learn the connection between property and personal rights. Since Mississippi, in 1839, Pennsylvania and New York in 1848, and Rhode Island about the same period, secured property rights to married women, there has been a great and rapidly increasing change in woman’s position, and as she constantly enters new industries, earning and controlling money, we find her as constantly more free and respected. When the English “Married Women’s Property Bill,” based upon that of New York, became a law a few years since, the London Times, with the perspicuity of our great thinker, Walker, said:
It probably portends indirect social effects much greater than the disposition of property, and it may in the end pulverize some ideas which have been at the basis of English life. Measures which affect the family economy are apt to be “epoch making”; and probably when the most talked of bills of the session are clean forgotten this obscure measure may be bearing fruit.
The exception of married women in the demand for political rights by the women of England, owes its origin to the old monkish theory that marriage is debasement, and celibate life in either man or woman a much higher condition. After the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, during the civil war, John Stuart Mill declared that married women were the only class of slaves remaining on earth. As long as a condition of religious or political subjection continues for her, a belief in the sanctity of womanhood cannot exist and crimes against her will be lightly punished. The most debased men of England and the United States, if arrested for cruelty to wives, agree in the indignant questioning protest: “Is she not my own that I should punish her as I please?”
Such has been the power of the priesthood over the consciences and lives of men, that we find whatever is bad in the laws either directly or indirectly traceable to their influence. Our Anglo Saxon forefathers were early amenable to religious authority and for a period of many hundred years clerical influence was exceedingly powerful over them. The church is responsible for the severity with which the simplest infraction of law was visited upon the most humble and helpless classes, and the greater penalty awarded to those least capable of resistance. It was for the free man of low estate, for the slave, and for woman that the greatest atrocities were reserved. If a free woman stole she was to be thrown down a precipice or drowned, which Pike regards as the origin of dragging witches through a pond. If the thief was a slave and stole from any but her own master, she was condemned to be burnt alive, and her fellow slaves were compelled to assist at the incineration. None dared to speak a good word for women in opposition to church teachings. All her instincts were held as evil. As the law and the father robbed the daughter, so the law and the church alike robbed the family. By ancient English law, as before noted, every person who made a will was bound to remember his lord with the best thing he possessed, and afterwards the church with the next best thing, but as the church gained power it took supreme place in the testament. The peasant was looked upon as but slightly above the cattle he cared for. A certain degree of sameness in material and intellectual conditions everywhere existed. The masses over christendom were alike under bondage of the thought and modes of action; social life showed no marked change for many hundred years. Freedom was an unknown word, or if by chance spoken, found itself under the ban of the church and the state. Justice was unthought of; the only question being, “has the church ordered it?” A complete system of espionage existed under both church and state. As late as the time of Alfred, in England, every nine men were under charge of a tenth. No man could work outside of his father’s employment to which he was bound; at nine o’clock curfew bell, all fires and lights were extinguished. A mechanic could not find work outside of his own village; monasteries and castles contained all there was of power and comfort. As late as the reformation we find the condition of English society lax and immoral. Henry the VIII was a fair type of the nation; the court, the camp, the church were all in line moulding the sentiment of community. Although Henry had declared the church to be an entire and perfect body within itself, possessing authority to regulate and decide all things without dependence upon any foreign power—meaning the pope,—he did not fail to generally define the supremacy of the church as united with and dependent upon the temporal government of the realm; the king, instead of the pope, becoming its spiritual head. Many new and restrictive canons were promulgated. Under Henry the prohibitory laws regarding nearness of relationship in marriage exceeded those of the Catholic Church. It is but a few decades since these prohibitions commencing with “a man shall not marry his grandmother;” “a woman shall not marry her grandfather;” and extending down to remote cousinship,—were to be found printed upon the fly leaves of every New Testament.
For a long period after the reformation, English women were not permitted to read the Bible, a statute of the Eighth Henry prohibiting “women and others of low degree,” from its use. Apparently for the purpose of preventing conversation among women regarding the tyranny under which they were kept, a law was passed forbidding the residence of more than one woman in a cottage, and this after the Protestant religion had been confirmed as that of the realm. As late as Elizabeth, 31-2, it was held a “heinous offence” for a cottager to give a home to his own widowed mother or homeless sister. The especial criminality of thus “harboring” one’s female relatives lay in the fact of their being “masterless.” As late as the XVI century the law still entered houses, and magistrates bound out to servile labor all women between eleven and forty years of age. The degradation of women under the reformation was still more gross than under catholicism. The worship of the Virgin Mary, and the canonization of many women as saints in the Romish Calendar, threw a certain halo about womankind that is impossible to discover in the Protestant Church, or since the reformation.
The church of whatever name taught woman’s innate depravity was so great that forcible restraint alone prevented her from plunging into vice. While Christian women outside the Levant were not confined in a harem under watch and ward, yet various methods of restraint have been used in christian lands within the past few centuries. Among the most noted of these, the “Chastity Belt,” three are yet known to be in existence. One is preserved in the museum at Cluny, France, another is in keeping of the Castle of Rosenburg, Copenhagen; the third was exhibited in the United States, 1884, by Dr. Heidmann’s traveling museum. According to tradition the one persevered at Cluny was in use during the XVI Century, in reign of Francis I, who ascended the throne January 1, 1515; the remaining two in Denmark under Christian IV in the seventeenth century. At this period Denmark was greatly agitated by a religious war, which however, did not include woman’s freedom in its demands. These belts are hideous proofs of the low estimate in which woman’s moral character was held, and equally striking evidence of man’s freedom and immorality.
The disrespect shown by the clergy towards marriage as compared with the celibate condition, has influenced thought in many singular directions. England’s married women under the combined influence of church and state deprecate the claim of suffrage for themselves, although asking it for single women and widows.
The bill referred to in the Memorial, 49 Vic., extended Parliamentary franchise to single women alone.
Second Sec. For all purposes of and incidental to the voting for members to serve in Parliament, women shall have the same rights as men, and all enactments relating to, or concerned in such election shall be construed accordingly. Provided that nothing in this Act contained shall enable women under coverture to be registered or to vote at such elections.
The word “coverture” expresses a married woman’s subordinate condition, both civilly and religiously. It means, under the power of the husband; controlled by the husband; possessing neither personal nor individual rights; a being not allowed to use her own judgment unless such judgment is ratified by the husband. Under coverture, the wife can make no contract without the husband’s consent, the law holding her incompetent. A woman under coverture is an irresponsible being except in case of crime. When married women refuse to seek the same freedom for themselves they ask for single women, they practically endorse the judgment of church and state in favor of celibacy. When married women thus ignore their equality with single women, they practically condemn that relation, practically affirm the superior purity of a celibate condition. The low estimate of women in England as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is shown in its literature, especially that emanating from its great universities. The betrayal of women formed the basis of story and song; not content with portraying their own vices, these men did not hesitate to put a plea against chastity in the mouths of mere children. Of such character is “A Ballad” emanating from this source, but professing to have been “composed by Miss Nelly Pentwenzle, a young lady of 15,” to be sung to the tune of “Scraps of Pudding.”
A periodical entitled The Old Woman’s Magazine printed in London, without date, but from internal evidence shown to belong to the latter part of the eighteenth century, forcibly protests against the destruction of innocence, which was the chief amusement of the men of this period. It asks:
Why should it be less a crime to deceive an inexperienced girl whose youth renders it impossible that she should know the world, than it would be to lead a blind man to the brink of a precipice?
Thus the laws and customs of family and social life, the literature of different periods, the habits of thought, the entire civilization of christian centuries, has tended to the debasement of woman and the consequent destruction of moral life. The world stands where it does today upon all these great questions, biased by a non-recognition through the ages of the sanctity of womanhood, and a disbelief in her rights of person within the marriage relation, or without; taught, as this lesson has been, by the church, and emphasized by the laws of the state.
There have ever been many severities connected with dower in England. By old law if a widow married within a year from the death of her husband she forfeited her dower. This law accounts for the superstitious sentiment as to ill-luck following the woman who re-marries within a year and a day. Like the freedom of the Roman “Usus” kept up by a three days’ absence in each year, this extra day of the widow’s mourning seems to have been added as security for the dower; while under the most ancient law of christian Europe, the widow lost her dower if she married again, the Turks recognizing the greater freedom of a widow, pay her who re-marries, a sum for parting with her liberty.
The general rule of dower held that when arranged at time of marriage, although the husband then possessed but a small portion of freehold and afterwards made great acquisitions, if no mention of new purchases was made at time of such arrangement, the widow could not claim more than the third part of the land possessed by the husband at time of marriage. In like manner if a husband had no land and endowed his wife with chattels, money, or other things, afterwards making great acquisitions in land, she could not claim dower in such acquisition. Neither could a woman dispose of her dower during her husband’s life. This was quite unlike the freedom enjoyed by a wife in ancient Wales where the dower became absolutely her own, to dispose of as she pleased. Under English law the husband during the lifetime of his wife could give or sell or alien her dower in any way that it pleased him to do, and the wife in this, as in all other things, was obliged to conform to the husband’s will. The wife’s dower right in personal property can be aliened by the husband in the United States. During the wife’s lifetime he may give, sell, or in any way dispose of the whole of his personal property absolutely, and the wife has no redress; she is not held as having any right, title or interest in it as long as her husband lives. The husband can also alien his real estate, subject only to his wife’s dower right in case she survive him; should she decease before him she has no power over it. The law in England as laid down by Glanville was that in case the wife withheld her consent to the sale of property she might claim her dower after her husband’s death, but this could only have had reference to real property, and is the same in the United States. If the wife withholds her consent to the sale of real estate, it still can be sold away from her and she thus be deprived of a home. It is merely subject to her dower right in the value of the property at time of sale, and in case she survives her husband; should she die first, she has no redress. Sales of this character are constantly made, at a small discount, upon chance of the wife’s nonsurvival. As dower right in real estate does not invest the wife with its ownership in fee, but merely the use of one-third during her natural life, it will readily be seen how very small is the wife’s protection in dower-right even in this last half of the nineteenth century. Bracton gives two reasons why the English husband could sell the dower assigned to the wife without her consent:
First, because a wife has no freehold in a dower previous to its being assigned to her. Second, because she cannot gainsay her husband.
As late as the last quarter of the present century, the learned Professor of Jurisprudence of Cambridge University, attempted to prove that it was no reproach against woman’s intellect that she was prohibited from making a contract during marriage; although failing in this attempt, he clearly succeeded in proving woman’s condition of pecuniary and personal slavery in the marriage relation. He said:
It is not an imputation on the wife’s experience or strength of mind, but is solely grounded on her not being assumed by common law to have sufficient command of her purse or of her future actions wherewith to procure materials for making a contract. The legal presumption then is, that she did not intend to make one, and therefore the allegation that she did make a contract would imply on the face of it a fraud.
The legal presumption that the wife has neither sufficient command of her purse or of her future actions to guarantee an intent of making a contract, needs no further assertion to prove her enslavement. The person neither possessing control of property or of their own actions is a slave, regardless of or under what verbiage of law or custom that condition is represented. Attempts are constantly made both in the United States and England to take from woman the dower right now accruing to them. During 1883, an Act was passed taking from English wives all dower right, giving the husband power to bar the wife in all cases; and scarcely a legislature convenes in the United States that has not a similar bill introduced before it. As dower rights increase the complication of land transfer, just as soon as the law which gave the husband the power to bar this right became operative in England, conveyancers began to insert a debaring clause in every deed of conveyance, thus systematically despoiling the wife even when the husband might not otherwise have been so disposed.
As “masterless women,” widows in England have received similar contemptuous treatment as accorded single women, to whom that country long showed such barbarity. It is curiously noted by Alexander that Moses placed widows in the same rank as harlots and profane women. The law of tenancy by courtesy, which gives a husband rights in the separate property of a wife, is very unjust when compared with the dower rights of a wife. In such case, provided she has borne a living child, even should such child breathe but once, the husband in case of the death of his wife, holds the entire real estate during his life, as “tenant by courtesy.” He also takes the whole of her personal property absolutely, to dispose of as he chooses. In a few of the United States, the wife can defeat this by will, but in the large majority of christian lands, the full rights “of tenancy by the courtesy,” still prevail. Where right of dower still prevails, the wife if there are children, takes but one-third of the personal property absolutely, one-half if there are no children, the rest passing to collateral heirs, who may be the husband’s most distant relatives. In case no such relative can be found, the balance escheats to the state, although in the State of New York the widow, under such circumstances, receives $2,000 over one half. Of the real property she has the use of but one-third, in contradistinction to the use of the whole of her real property, which goes to the husband by “tenancy of courtesy.” In tenancy by courtesy the children are robbed of the mother’s real estate during the life of the father, and of her personal property, forever. In enacting property laws, man, under tenancy by courtesy robs his own children. The law of inheritance in Spain, that country distinguished among European nations as “Most Christian land,” compels a man to leave four-fifths of his property to his children, but does not make it obligatory upon him to endow his wife with the remaining fifth. Neither has the wife a dower right in property owned by her husband at time of the marriage. The suite of a Spanish widow for dower right, in an estate of several millions left by her deceased husband, was fully reported by the New York daily papers within the past five years. Suddenly reduced from affluence as the wife of this man, to the most abject poverty as his widow, this wife and mother brought suit against the estate and her children, who receiving all the property by the husband’s will, left her absolutely beggared.
In ancient Ireland, the condition of woman was far superior to that of the christian women of England or Scotland. Two forms of marriage existed. Under that of “Equal Dignity,” the rights of the contracting parties were the same, and took place when the man and woman possessed the same amount of land, cattle, or household goods. No force or sale accompanied it, the woman giving free consent equally with the man. This marriage was looked upon as a contract between equals. The property of the wife did not revert to the husband. She retained its control, loaning it and receiving interest entirely free from the interference of her husband. Ancient Irish law, also secured to the mother equal authority with the father over the children of the marriage. There is no trace of that arbitrary control over both wife and children with which Christianity endowed the father. The daughter was held to be more closely related to the father; a son to the mother, this belief contributing an equality of right between the sexes. These laws were authoritative over the whole of Ireland until the invasion of the Danes, in the eight century (A.D. 792).
It is remarkable what effect the ownership of property by woman has ever had in ameliorating her legal condition. Even in ancient Ireland the wife without possessions became the slave of her husband. Although the son was held as more nearly related to his mother, this ancient code provided that in case his parents were poor and he had not wealth enough to support both father and mother, he was to leave the latter to die in the ditch, but was to carry his father back to his own home. Tradition ascribes this code to St. Patrick in the fifth century. Under modern christian law, the legal obligation of a son to support his father is greater than it is to support his mother, quite in opposition to the old Scandinavian (pagan) law, which provided for the support of the mother if but one parent could be cared for. Not the least among the wrongs inflicted upon Ireland by English usurpation, has been the destruction of the wife’s rights of property. The right of the Irish wife to deal with her own property as she chose, irrespective of her husband’s consent, was expressly declared illegal by English judges at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
