ABSTRACT
Humbert IV. of Savoy, we are told, having a predilection for the town of Villafranca, and being desirous to increase its importance, conceded to it-among other privileges-the right for every inhabitant to beat his wife, provided only that death did not result. Old chroniclers say that many residents were attracted to Villafranca on this accoUnt. But if Villafranca had been in England, there would have been no need to endow its inhabitants with this special privilege, for the law empowering a husband to give his wife moderate correction has never been repealed. Recent police reports show how liberally this right is interpreted among our lower orders. 'Ve have no need to recapitulate the horrible atrocitip.s with which our newspapers have lately teemed-of women who have been beaten and kicked to death, burned with palTafin, blinded with vinegar-since these cruelties are practised, not only on any poor woman who is legally tied to the brute, but also frequently on those who are living with their tyrants by choice, strange as it may seem, that repeated brutality should in such cases be condoned. But what we complain of is, first, that these cruelties and outrages are not held a sufficient reason for releasing a woman who has once escaped with her life from the tyranny of her husband, who, after his term of imprisonment, may come back again and again to torment her if she has not the money to pay for a judicial separation; and secondly, that, though all punishments for personal assaults are lighter in England than punishments for other offences, they are doubly insufficient in the case of brutality to wives. The British workman says, " Shall I not do as I
EDcllohwoman'. Rcyl • .,..,] The Bigl, Crime o~ Mat1-imony. 109 Karch I~th, 18il. 'J
Magistrates sometimes endorse this view. Richard Mountain, a labourer, for assaulting his wife with brutal violence just after her confinement, got four months' imprisonment. The same paper recorded the case of a man who, when drunk, quarrelled with a woman who was not his wife. and, though both were to blame, he got six months. Thomas Harton, a blacksmith, received fifteen months' imprisonment, with hard labour, for l..;lling his wife with a blow of his fist, The man who deliberately burned his wife to death with paraffin, was acquitted of murder, receiving only the sentence for "manslaughter."
