ABSTRACT
The necessity of such a regulation had become continuously more evident as weeks and months went by. It was difficult to open a paper without finding ODe or more cases of what :Miss Cobbe rightly termed" Wife Torture," and equally difficult to avoid being struck by the painfully inadequate punishments which were meted to this crime. It has for a long time been possible for a. rich woman to obtain a decree of judici81 separation under circumstances of aggravated cruelty-but the class of women which could afford to pay was precisely not the class which suftered oftenest or most terribly. It is the illiterate, umeclaimed labourer or artisan who most frequently knocks his wife's eye out or jumps upon her, and for these poor women there has hitherto been no relief except the temporary respite while her tormentor was in prison,-overshado,ved by the dread of what he might do to her in revenge when he came out. Now, at all events his legal power as tormentor will be abridged. '1'he children, who, in many cases are nearly as great sufferers as the wife, will also be removed from his control, and he will still be made to feel the responsibilities of husband and father, by the weekly payments he is compelled to make.
