‘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.