The “boycott” is not an invention of the present century, but was in use many hundred years since against a recalcitrant wife, under sanction of both church and state. The advertisements of absconding wives seen at the present day, whom the husband sets forth as having left his bed and board and whom all persons are thereafter forbidden to trust upon his account, are but a reminiscence of the wife-boycott of former years, when all persons, were forbidden to “harbor her” under penalty unless it could be proven that her life was in danger without such aid. The husband was held to possess vested rights in the wife, not only as against herself, but as against the world, and it is not half a decade since the notice below, appeared in a Kansas paper,[116] accompanied by the cut of a fleeing woman.
A $50 CAPTURE.
A woman who ran away from her husband at Lawrence some time ago, was found at Fort Leavenworth yesterday by a Lawrence detective and taken back to her home. The officer received a reward of $50 for her capture.—Leavenworth Standard, Kas., Dec. 21, 1886.
This advertisement and others of a similar character to be seen in the daily and weekly press of the country, are undeniable proofs of the low condition under the law, of woman in the marriage relation, and read very much like the notices in regard to absconding slaves a few years since. Kansas was one of the very first states which recognized the right of a married mother to her own child, that provision having been incorporated in its constitution at early date as an enticement for bringing women emigrants into that state, at a period when the anti-slavery and pro-slavery contests within its borders had made it bloody ground. Although the married woman’s property law and the spirit of free thought has rendered such action less frequent than formerly, it is less than forty years, as before noted, since the New York Court of Common Pleas rendered a judgment of a0,000 in favor of a husband against the relatives of his wife, who at her own request “harbored and sheltered” her. The Christian principle of man’s ownership of woman, for many hundred years under English law, rendered the party giving shelter to a fleeing wife liable to the husband in money damages, upon the ground of having aided a runaway servant to the master’s injury. Under but one circumstance was such shelter admissible. In case the wife was in danger of perishing, she could be harbored until morning, when she must be returned to her master by the person who had thus temporarily taken care of his perishable property. In England as late as 1876, the case of a Mrs. Cochrane, who had lived apart from her husband for years, and showing another phase of property law in the wife, came up before Judge Coleridge. Her character was not at all impeached, but she indulged in amusements which her husband considered reprehensible, and through stratagem she was brought to his lodgings and there kept a prisoner. A writ of habeas corpus being sued out, the husband was compelled to bring her before the court of the Queen’s Bench. The decision of the judge rendered in favor of the husband’s right of forcible detention, was declared by him to be upon ground that English law virtually considered the wife as being under the guardianship of the husband, not a person in her own right, and this distinctly upon the ground of her perpetual infancy;[117] she must be restored to her husband. As late as 1886, the Personal Rights Journal of England called attention to the suit of a clergyman for the “restitution of conjugal rights” and custody of child. The wife not being able to live in agreement with the husband, had taken her child and left him. A decree for such restitution having been pronounced by court, the husband Rev. Joseph Wallis, advertised for his absconding wife, Caroline Wallis, offering one hundred pounds reward for such information as should lead to her discovery.
£100 REWARD.
Whereas, A Decree was pronounced in the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, on the 5th day of June, 1886, in the suit of Samuel Joseph Wallis versus Caroline Wallis, for restitution of conjugal rights, and for custody of the child, May Wallis, to the petitioner, the said Samuel Joseph Wallis. And Whereas it has been ascertained that the said Caroline Wallis has lately been seen at Whitstable and the Neighborhood,
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN,
That the above Reward will be paid to any Person or Persons who shall give such information as will lead to the discovery of the whereabouts of the said Caroline Wallis, and the recovery by the said S. J. Wallis of the custody of the said Child.
Information to be sent to me, Richard Howe Brightman, of Sheerness, Kent, Solicitor to the said Samuel Joseph Wallis.
This brutal advertisement in the dying hours of the nineteenth century had the effect of rousing public attention to woman’s enslaved condition in the marital relation, and a rapid growth of public sentiment in recognition of a wife’s individual and distinct personality, took place between 1886 and 1890, a period of four years. During the latter year another English husband, one Jackson, forcibly abducted his wife who lived apart from him, holding her prisoner with gun and bayonet, threatening her friends with death—as was his legal right in case of her attempted rescue. When this was known, hundreds of letters poured into the press, upholding the right of a wife to the control of her own person, and writ of habeas corpus compelled her production in court. Under the pressure of a public sentiment he found it wise to conciliate, the judge decided in favor of her right to live away from her husband, who was also restrained from farther molesting her. The Supreme Court of Georgia recently rendered a decision in regard to the rights of husbands as related to the wife’s rights of property, in which the church theory of her subordination was maintained.