Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

The cases of cruelty of which I obtained statistics, furnished to me mainly by the kindness of Miss A. Shore, almost surpassed belief. It appeared that about 1,500 cases of aggravated (over and above ordinary) assaults on wives took place every year in England; on an average about four a day. Many of them were of truly incredible savagery; and the victims were, in the vast majority of cases, not drunken viragos (who usually escape violence or give as good as they receive), but poor, pale, shrinking creatures, who strove to earn bread for their children and to keep together their miserable homes; and whose very tears and pallor were reproaches which provoked the heteropathy and cruelty of their tyrants.

After much reflection I came to the conclusion that in spite of all the authority in favour of flogging the delinquents, it was not expedient on the women’s behalf that they should be so punished, since after they had undergone such chastisement, however well merited, the ruffians would inevitably return more brutalised and infuriated than ever; and again have their wives at their mercy. The only thing really effective, I considered, was to give the wife the power of separating herself and her children from her tyrant. Of course in the upper ranks, where people could afford to pay for a suit in the Divorce Court, the law had for some years opened to the assaulted wife this door of escape. But among the working classes, where the assaults were ten-fold as numerous and twenty times more cruel, no legal means whatever existed of escaping from the husband returning after punishment to beat and torture his wife again. I thought the thing to be desired was the extension of the privilege of rich women to their poorer sisters, to be effected by an Act of Parliament which should give a wife whose husband had been convicted of an aggravated assault on her, the power to obtain a Separation Order under Summary Jurisdiction.

Mr. Alfred Hill, J.P., of Birmingham, son of my old friend Recorder Hill, most kindly interested himself in my project, and drafted a Bill to be presented to Parliament embodying my wishes. Meanwhile; I set about writing an article setting forth the extent of the evil, the failure of the measures hitherto taken in various Acts of Parliament, and, finally, the remedy I proposed. This article my friend Mr. Percy Bunting was good enough to publish in the Contemporary Review in the spring of 1878. I also wrote an article in Truth on Wife Torture, afterwards reprinted. Meanwhile, I had obtained the most cordial assistance from Mr. Frederick Pennington and Mr. Hopwood, both of whom were then in Parliament, and it was agreed that I should beg Mr. Russell Gurney to take charge of the Bill which these gentlemen would support. I went accordingly, armed with the draft Bill, to the Recorder’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and, as I anxiously desired to find him at home, I ventured to call as early as 10.30. Mr. Gurney read the draft Bill carefully, and entirely approved it. “Then,” I said, “you will take charge of it, I earnestly hope?” “No,” said Mr. Gurney, “I cannot do that; I am too old and over-worked to undertake all the watching and labour which may be necessary; but I will put my name on the back of it, with pleasure.”

I knew, of course, that his name would give the measure great importance and also help me to find some other M.P. to take charge of it, so I could not but thank him gratefully. At that moment of our interview, his charming wife entered the room leading a little boy; I believe his nephew. Naturally I apologized to Mrs. Gurney for my presence at that unholy hour of the morning; and said, “I came to Mr. Gurney in my anxiety, as the Friend of Women.” Mr. Gurney, hearing me, put his hands on the little lad’s shoulder and said to him, “Do you hear that, my boy? I hope that when you are an old man, as I am, some lady like Miss Cobbe may call you the Friend of Women!”

At last, the Bill embodying precisely the purport of that drawn up for me by Mr. Hill, and subsequently published in the Contemporary Review, was read a first time, the names of Mr. Herschell (now Lord Herschell) and Sir Henry Holland (afterwards Lord Knutsford) being on the back of it. Every arrangement was made for the second Reading; and for avoiding the opposition which we expected to meet from a party which seems always to think that by calling certain unions “Holy” a Church can sanctify that which has become a bond of savage cruelty on one side, and soul-degrading slavery on the other. Just at this crisis, Lord Penzance, who was bringing a Bill into the House of Lords to remedy some defects concerning the costs of the intervention of the Queen’s Proctor in Matrimonial causes, introduced into it a clause dealing with the case of the assaulted wives, and giving them precisely the benefit contemplated in our Bill and in my article; namely, that of Separation Orders to be granted by the same magistrates who have convicted the husband of aggravated assaults upon them. That Lord Penzance had seen our Bill, then before the Lower House, (it was ordered to be printed February 14th) and had had his attention called to the subject, either by it, or by my article in the Contemporary Review, I have taken as probable, but have no exact knowledge. I went at once to call on him and thank him from my heart for undertaking to do this great service of mercy to women; and also to pray him to consider certain points about the custody of the children of such assaulted wives. Lord Penzance received me with the utmost kindness and likewise gave favourable consideration to a letter or two which I ventured to address to him. It is needless to say that his advocacy of the measure carried it through the House of Lords without opposition. I believe that in speaking for it he said that if any noble Lord needed proof of the grievous want of such protection for wives they would find it in my article, which he held in his hand.

There was still, we feared, an ordeal to go through in the House of Commons; but the fates and hours were propitious, and the Bill, coming in late one night as already passed by the House of Lords and with Lord Penzance’s great name on it,—escaped opposition and was accepted without debate. By the 27th May, 1878, it had become the law of the land, and has since taken its place as Chapter 19 of the 41st Vict. An Act to amend the Matrimonial Causes Acts. The following are the clauses which concern the assaulted Wives:—

4. If a husband shall be convicted summarily or otherwise of an aggravated assault within the meaning of the statute twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth Victoria, chapter one hundred, section forty-three, upon his wife, the Court or magistrate before whom he shall be so convicted may, if satisfied that the future safety of the wife is in peril, order that the wife shall be no longer bound to cohabit with her husband; and such order shall have the force and effect in all respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty; and such order may further provide,

1. That the husband shall pay to his wife such weekly sum as the Court or magistrate may consider to be in accordance with his means, and with any means which the wife may have for her support, and the payment of any sum of money so ordered shall be enforceable and enforced against the husband in the same manner as the payment of money is enforced under an order of affiliation; and the Court or magistrate by whom any such order for payment of money shall be made shall have power from time to time to vary the same on the application of either the husband or the wife, upon proof that the means of the husband or wife have been altered in amount since the original order or any subsequent order varying it shall have been made.

2. That the legal custody of any children of the marriage under the age of ten years shall, in the discretion of the Court or magistrate, be given to the wife.

At first the magistrates were very chary of granting the Separation Orders. One London Police Magistrate had said that the House of Commons would never put such power in the hands of one of the body, and he was, I suppose, proportionately startled when just six weeks later, it actually lay in his own. By degrees, however, the practice of granting the Orders on proper occasions became common, and appears now to be almost a matter of course. I hope that at least a hundred poor souls each year thus obtain release from their tormentors, and probably the deterrent effect of witnessing such manumission of ill-treated slaves may have still more largely served to protect women from the violence of brutal husbands.