[5] See Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, ii. 303.
Among various peoples of a higher type the husband has, under certain circumstances, had the right of punishing his wife capitally; but this seems to be nearly all that is involved in that “power of life and death” which he is said to have possessed over her.[6] However, whilst custom or law forbade him to kill his wife without sufficient cause, such a deed was hardly looked upon with the same horror, or treated with the same severity, as the murder of a husband by his wife, owing to the former’s superior position in the family. Among the Langobardi, according to the laws of King Rothar, a husband who killed his wife had to pay the same compensation as anybody else would have had to pay for taking her life, but if a wife killed her husband, she was put to death, and her property forfeited to the family of the dead.[7] In Russia, in the seventeenth century, whilst a husband who murdered his wife was, according to law, obnoxious to corporal punishment, a wife who murdered her husband was buried alive, with the head above the ground, and left to perish by hunger.[8] According to English law, a woman who killed her husband was guilty of “petit treason,” that is, murder in its most odious degree.[9]
[6] Rein, Japan, p. 424. Hommel, Die semitischen Völker und Sprachen, i. 417 (Babylonians). Leist, Altarisches Jus Civile, i. 196, 275 (“Aryan” peoples). Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 705; Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia, ii. 61 sq.; Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 250; Keyser Efterladte Skrifter, ii. pt. ii. 28 sq. (Teutons).
[7] Edictus Rothari, 200 sqq.
[8] Macieiowski, Slavische Rechtsgeschichte, iv. 292. For a Corsican law concerning matricide, see Cibrario, Economia politica del medio eve, i. 344; and for the punishment inflicted for the same crime on a woman in Nuremberg, in 1487, see Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes, ii. 607.
[9] Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, iv. 203.
Among many peoples the life of a woman is held cheaper than that of a man, independently of the relationship between the slayer and his victim. In Burma, if a woman was accidentally killed, less compensation had to be paid than for a man. A Burman explained this in the following words:—“A woman is worth less than a man in that way. A maidservant can be hired for less than a manservant, a daughter can claim less than a son. They cannot do so much work; they are not so strong. If they had been worth more, the law would have been the other way; of course they are worth less.”[10] Among Muhammedans the price of blood for a woman is half the sum which is the price of blood for a free man.[11] In ancient India the murder of a woman, unless she was with child, was in the eye of the law on a par with the murder of a Sûdra.[12] According to Cambrian law, the galanas, or blood-price, of a woman was half the galanas of her brother.[13] Among the Teutons the wergeld of a woman varied: sometimes it was the same as that for a man, sometimes only half as much, but sometimes twice as much, or, if she was pregnant, even more.[14] These variations depended upon the different points of view from which the offence was looked upon. By herself she was worth less than a man, as a mother she was worth more;[15] and, quite apart from her value, the natural helplessness of her sex tended to aggravate the crime.[16] Among modern savages and barbarians, also, the estimate of a woman’s life is in some instances lower than that of a man’s,[17] in some equal to it,[18] and in some higher.[19] Among the Gallas the killing of a free man can be atoned for only by one thousand cattle, whereas fifty are deemed sufficient for the killing of a woman.[20] On the other hand, among the Iroquois two hundred yards of wampum were paid for the murder of a woman, and only one hundred for that of a man.[21] Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, whilst the compensation for murder is eighty dollars if the victim was an ordinary man or boy, it is one hundred and fifty dollars if the person murdered was a woman or a girl.[22] Among the Agār, a Dinka tribe, the murder of a man must be atoned for by a fine of thirty cows, that of a woman by forty cows.[23] Where wives are purchased, the killing of a woman involves the destruction of valuable property, and is dealt with accordingly.
[10] Fielding, The Soul of a People, p. 171.
[11] Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 18.
[12] Baudhâyana, i. 10. 19. 3. Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 305 sqq.