Chapter IV · 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.