The Law and the Poor

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

Here is another typical case. George marries Mary, their ages are eighteen and seventeen. Soon after marriage Mary—who comes of an immoral family—starts drinking and going about with other men. Ultimately she deserts George and becomes pregnant by another man and is confined in hospital. The guardians proceed against George for the expenses of the confinement, but he is able to prove to their satisfaction that he is not the father of the child. Mary then disappears to further infidelities and George goes back to live with his mother. Later on Anna appears on the scene and George and Anna have now a comfortable home and healthy infant. “They think a deal of it and wish it could be legitimate.”

So, no doubt, do Charles and Jane and many other poor parents in like case. The law says that these people are entitled to have a divorce, only the law erects its Court in a corner of London inaccessible to these poor provincials, and makes the costs and fees and services of its judges and officials and counsellors so expensive that there is no possibility of Charles and George, and Jane and Anna, and their little infants having the blessings of legal and holy matrimony because they have not the cash to purchase the luxury which is not for the likes of them anyhow. And when it is suggested that divorce might be cheapened and made available for these poor citizens archbishops shake their heads, and legal bigwigs, with their eye on the fees and the costs, hold up their hands in amazement. Divorce is a reasonable proposition for Marmaduke and Ermyntrude, of “The Towers,” Loamshire, but for George and Anna in Back Tank Street, Shuttleborough—not likely. There is no demand for it, says the Minority Report, and its worthy authors point out with cynical contempt for the working classes that they have got a system of separation orders which is really all they require.

Now if there is one thing which the evidence before the Commission puts beyond doubt it is that the law in relation to separation orders induces, invites, and causes immorality in the poor. Cranmer, you remember, knew all about that, and looked on separation without the right to remarry as an unclean thing. But since the sorrows of the poor in their marriage shipwrecks were so manifest, and the Divorce Court was closed to them, systems of magisterial separation orders, cheap permanent divorces, without the right to marry again, have become the order of the day.

There are some six thousand of these decrees made annually. The evidence is overwhelming as to the evils that spring from these orders. As Mrs. Tennant reports, “I believe that separation orders, the general alternative offered to divorce, work badly in working-class houses, and on the whole make for an increase rather than a diminution of immorality. We have to consider housing conditions and economic circumstances which often do not make for clean or wholesome ways of life, and where the relief offered by separation is not only inadequate but positively mischievous.”

Put in plainer terms by the witnesses, a labouring man, if he has to find a home for his children, has to find a woman to keep house for him; a woman of the same class has to pay a rent, which necessitates the taking in of a lodger. Human nature being what it is, it seemed superfluous to appoint a Royal Commission of trusty and well-beloved ones to tell us what would happen. This is a system that the Archbishop of York thinks “probably fulfils its purpose fairly well.”

Of course, it all depends what its purpose may be. If it is its purpose to stand in the way of cheap divorce and the rights of the poor to have the same chance of rescue from a shipwrecked marriage that the rich possess, all is indeed well. But if the object of the law is to bring to those who are weary and in misery some hope of a new life and a new home where children can be born without shame and the parties can live in accordance with the wishes of themselves and their neighbours, then with all respect to the Primate of England, the law is probably fulfilling its purpose very damnably.

It is only fair, of course, to remember that the Archbishop of York and his learned colleagues of the Minority Report never meet Fred and Jane and George and Anna in real life, and can know no more about such folk at first hand, and have as little chance of understanding their point of view, as I have of studying and comprehending the sociological limitations of the higher priesthood.

Detestable as I hold these ecclesiastical errors to be in their practical bearing on the lives of the poor, I am hopeful that time and argument will overcome the ecclesiastical veto on reform. I am sure that even a bishop would be converted to healthier views of life if he could have a little home chat with George and Anna. And if their pleading did not convince him, I have a belief that the sight of their babies might touch the heart which even in a bishop, we may suppose beats somewhere beneath the chimere and rochet or whatever the vestments are called in which his lordship disguises his human nature from the lower classes.

Many of our judges and other learned men see very clearly the enormous importance of divorce reform to the poor. Mr. Justice Bargrave Deane put the matter very straightly to the Commission when he said, “The question of divorce is more a question for the poor than the rich. The rich have their homes and their comforts and their friends who are of a different position and who can by their own advice and conduct keep people straight.” In so far as this implies that the standard of morality or etiquette of decent matrimonial conduct is stricter among the rich than the poor, I doubt its truth. The working classes have no leisure for flirtations and philandering. The behaviour of a fast set in a wealthy country house—which is generally more vulgar than really naughty—would probably scandalise the dwellers in a back street. But what the learned judge wished to emphasise was that the consequences of ill-conduct in a husband or wife are far more serious in the everyday life of the cottage than in that of the mansion. Here he is undoubtedly right.

What, for instance, can be more terrible than the effect of persistent drunkenness on the married life of the poor. Alfred and Anna have two children. The man earns thirty-two shillings and sixpence a week when in full work and is a thoroughly decent and respectable man. His wife is an inebriate. She pawns everything for drink and neglects her children. Her husband obtains a separation order, but after three years Anna promised reform, and Alfred, like the good fellow he was, took her back. Unfortunately in two months she was as bad as ever, and furniture, bedding, clothes, all the household goods disappear to the pawnshop. The children are reported upon by the school authorities. The parents are prosecuted for neglect, and on Anna agreeing to go to an inebriates’ home for twelve months the bench postpone sentence. When she comes out she is a wreck, suffering from alcoholic neuritis which is leading to paralysis. During her absence Alfred has had to pay seven and six a week for her maintenance. He now allows her five shillings a week and she lives with her sister. He is on short time earning twenty-six shillings a week. The children are without mother, the home is without a woman’s care and influence and his income is rendered insufficient to provide the necessaries of life.