The Fraud of Feminism

by Ernest Belfort Bax

We have already given examples of the fact in question, and they could be indefinitely extended. At the end of the year 1911, at Birmingham, in the case of a woman convicted of the murder of her paramour by deliberately pouring inflammable oil over him while he was asleep, and then setting it afire, and afterwards not only exulting in the action but saying she was ready to do it again, the jury brought in recommendation to mercy with their verdict. And, needless to say, the influence of Political and Sentimental Feminism was too strong to allow the capital sentence to be carried out, even with such a fiendish wretch as this. In the case of the Italian woman in Canada, Napolitano, before mentioned, the female franchise societies issued a petition to Mr Borden, the Premier of Canada, in favour of the commutation of sentence. The usual course was adopted in this case, as in most others in which a woman murders a man—to wit, the truly

“chivalrous” one of trying to blacken the character of the dead victim in defence of the action of the murderess. In other cases, more especially, of course, where the man is guilty of a crime against a woman, when mercy is asked for the offender, we are pitifully adjured to “think of the poor victim.” As we have seen, Lord Haldane trotted out this exhortation in a case where it was absurdly inappropriate, since the much-commiserated “victim” had only herself to thank for being a “victim,” and still more for remaining a “victim.” We never hear this plea for the “victim” urged where the “victim” happens to be a man and the offender a woman. Compare this with the case of the boy of nineteen, Beal, whom Mr M‘Kenna hanged for the murder of his sweetheart, and that in the teeth of an explanation given in the defence which was at least possible, if not probable, and which certainly, putting it at the very lowest, introduced an element of doubt into the case. Fancy a girl of nineteen being convicted, whatever the evidence, of having poisoned her paramour or even if, per impossibile, she were convicted, fancy her being given more than a short term of imprisonment! A man murdered by a woman is always the horrid brute, while the woman murdered by the man is just as surely the angelic victim. Anyone who reads reports of cases with an unbiassed mind must admit the absolute accuracy of this statement.

Divine woman is always the “injured innocent,” not only in the graver crimes, such as murder, but also in the minor offences coming under the cognisance of the law. At the Ledbury Petty Sessions a woman in the employment of a draper, who had purloined goods to the amount of £150, was acquitted on the ground of “kleptomania,” and this notwithstanding the fact that she had been in the employment of the prosecutor for over five years, had never complained of illness and had never been absent from business; also that her landlady gave evidence showing that she was sound in mind and body. At the very same sessions two men were sentenced respectively to eight and twelve months’ imprisonment for stealing goods to the value of £5! (John Bull, 12th November 1910).

At this point I may be permitted to quote from the article formerly alluded to (Fortnightly Review, November 1911, case taken from a report in The News of the World of 28th February 1909): “A young woman shot at the local postman with a revolver; the bullet grazed his face, she having fired point blank at his head. Jury returned a verdict of not guilty, although the revolver was found on her when arrested, and the facts were admitted and were as follows:—At noon she left her house, crossing three fields to the house of the victim, who was at home and alone; upon his

appearing she fired point blank at his head; he banged to the door, and thus turned off the bullet, which grazed his face and ‘ploughed a furrow through his hair.’ She had by her when arrested a revolver cocked and with four chambers undischarged.”

Let us now take the crime of violent assault with attempt to do bodily injury. The following cases will serve as illustrative examples:—From The News of the World, 9th May 1909: A nurse in Belfast sued her lost swain for breach of promise. She obtained £100 damages although it was admitted by her counsel that she had thrown vitriol over the defendant, thereby injuring him, and the defendant had not prosecuted her! Also it was admitted that she had been “carrying on” with another man. From The Morning Leader of 8th July 1905 I have taken the following extraordinary facts as to the varied punishment awarded in cases of vitriol-throwing: That of a woman who threw vitriol over a sergeant at Aldershot, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment without hard labour while a man who threw it over a woman at Portsmouth was tried and convicted at the Hants Assizes, on 7th July 1905, and sentenced by Mr Justice Bigham to twelve years’ penal servitude! As regards the first case it will be observed that, (notwithstanding a crime, which in the case of a man was described by the judge as “cowardly

and vile” and meriting twelve years’ penal servitude) the woman was rewarded by damages for £100, to be obtained from the very victim whom she had done her best to maim for life (besides being unfaithful to him) and who had generously abstained from prosecuting.

But it is not merely in cases of murder, attempted murder or serious assault that justice is mocked by the present state of our law and its administration in the interests of the female sex. The same attitude is observed, the same farcical sentences on women, whether the crime be theft, fraud, common assault, criminal slander or other minor offences. We have the same preposterous excuses admitted, the same preposterous pleas allowed, and the same farcical sentences passed—if, indeed, any sentence be passed at all. The following examples I have culled at random:—From John Bull, 26th February 1910: At the London Sessions, Mr Robert Wallace had to deal with the case of a well-dressed woman living at Hampstead, who pleaded guilty to obtaining goods to the amount of £50 by false pretences. In explanation of her crime it was stated that she was under a mistaken impression that her engagement would not lead to marriage, that she became depressed, and that she “did not know what she said or did,” while in mitigation of punishment it was urged that the money had been repaid, that

her fiancé could not marry her if she were sent to gaol, and that her life would be irretrievably ruined, and she was discharged! From The Birmingham Post, 4th February 1902: A female clerk (twenty-six) pleaded guilty to embezzling £5, 1s. 9d. on 16th November, £2, 2s. 4d. on 21st December and £5, 0s. 9d. on 23rd December last, the moneys of her employer. Prosecuting counsel said prisoner entered prosecutor’s employ in 1900, and in June last her salary was raised to 27s. 6d. a week. The defalcations, which began a month before the increase, amounted to £134. She had falsified the books, and when suspicion fell upon her destroyed two books, in order, as she thought, to prevent detection. Her counsel pleaded for leniency on the ground of her previous good character and because she was engaged! The recorder merely bound her over, stating that her parents and young man were respectable, and so was the house in which she lodged! A correspondent mentions in The Birmingham Post of February 1902 a case where a woman had burned her employer’s outhouses and property, doing £1800 worth of damage, and got off with a month’s imprisonment. On the other hand, the same judge, at the same Quarter Sessions, thus dealt with two male embezzlers: C. C. (twenty-eight), clerk, who pleaded guilty to embezzling two sums of money from his master in August and September of 1901