The Fraud of Feminism

by Ernest Belfort Bax

husband, if a poor man, on her release will be compelled to take her back to live with him. The case came under the notice of the writer a few years ago in which a humane magistrate was constrained to let off a woman who had nearly murdered a husband on the condition of her graciously consenting to a separation, but she had presumably still to be supported by her victim.

The decision in the notorious Jackson case precluded the husband from compelling his wife to obey an order of the court for the restitution of conjugal rights. The persistent Feminist tendency of all case-law is illustrated by a decision of the House of Lords in 1894 in reference to the law of Scotland constituting desertion for four years a ground ipso facto for a divorce with the right of remarriage. Here divorce was refused to a man whose wife had left him for four years and taken her child with her. The Law Lords justified their own interpretation of the law on the ground that the man did not really want her to come back. But inasmuch as this plea can be started in every case where it cannot be proved that the husband had absolutely grovelled before his wife, imploring her to return, and possibly even then—since the sincerity even of this grovelling might conceivably be called in question—it is clear that the decision practically rendered this old Scottish law inoperative for the husband.

As regards the offence of bigamy, for which a man commonly receives a heavy sentence of penal servitude, I think I may venture to state, without risking contradiction, that no woman during recent years has been imprisoned for this offence. The statute law, while conferring distinct privileges upon married women as to the control of their property, and for trading separately and apart from their husbands, renders them exempt from the ordinary liabilities incurred by a male trader as regards proceedings under the Debtors Acts and the Bankruptcy Law. See Acts of 1822 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 75); 1893 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 63), and cases Scott v. Morley, 57 L.J.R.Q.B. 43. L.R. 20 Q.B.D. In re Hannah Lines exparte Lester C.A. (1893), 2. 2. B. 113.

In the case of Lady Bateman v. Faber and others reported in Chancery Appeal Cases (1898 Law Reports) the Master of the Rolls (Sir N. Lindley) is reported to have said: “The authorities showed that a married woman could not by hook or by crook—even by her own fraud—deprive herself of restraint upon anticipation. He would say nothing as to the policy of the law, but it had been affirmed by the Married Woman’s Property Act” (the Act of 1882 above referred to) “and the result was that a married woman could play fast and loose to an extent to which no other person could.” (N.B.—Presumably a male person.)

It has indeed been held, to such a length does the law extend its protection and privileges to the female, that even the concealment by a wife from the husband at the time of marriage that she was then pregnant by another man was no ground for declaring the marriage null and void.

The above may be taken as a fair all-round, although by no means an exhaustive, statement of the present one-sided condition of the civil law as regards the relation of husband and wife. We will now pass on to the consideration of the relative incidence of the criminal law on the two sexes. We will begin with the crime of murder. The law of murder is still ostensibly the same for both sexes, but in effect the application of its provisions in the two cases is markedly different. As, however, these differences lie, as just stated, not in the law itself but rather in its administration, we can only give in this place, where we are dealing with the principles of law rather than with their application, a general formula of the mode in which the administration of the law of murder proceeds, which, briefly stated, is as follows: The evidence even to secure conviction in the case of a woman must be many times stronger than that which would suffice to hang a man. Should a conviction be obtained, the death penalty, though pronounced, is not given effect to, the female prisoner being almost invariably reprieved. In

most cases where there is conviction at all, it is for manslaughter and not for murder, when a light or almost nominal sentence is passed. Cases confirming what is here said will be given later on. There is one point, however, to be observed here, and that is the crushing incidence of the law of libel. This means that no case of any woman, however notoriously guilty on the evidence, can be quoted, after she has been acquitted by a Feminist jury, as the law holds such to be innocent and provides them with “a remedy” in a libel action. Now, seeing that most women accused of murder are acquitted irrespective of the evidence, it is clear that the writer is fatally handicapped so far as confirmation of his thesis by cases is concerned.

Women are to all intents and purposes allowed to harass men, when they conceive they have a grievance, at their own sweet will, the magistrate usually telling their victim that he cannot interfere. In the opposite case, that of a man harassing a woman, the latter has invariably to find sureties for his future good behaviour, or else go to gaol.