Question. If married, is your husband living with you, or what caused the separation?
| Causes. | Numbers. | ||
| Living together | 71 | ||
| Ill-usage of husbands | 103 | ||
| Desertion of" | 60 | ||
| """to live with other women | 43 | ||
| Intemperance | 45 | ||
| Husbands went to sea | 39 | ||
| "refused to support them | 29 | ||
| Infidelity | 25 | ||
| No cause assigned | 75 | ||
| Totals | 419 | 71 | |
| —— | 419 | ||
| Aggregate of married women | 490 | ||
The most striking and painful fact in these answers is revealed in the first line of the table, which contains an announcement so disgraceful to humanity that, but for the positive evidence adduced by the figures, it would be scarcely credited, namely, that of four hundred and ninety married women now living as prostitutes, seventy-one (more than one seventh) are cohabiting with their husbands. It can not be controverted that such cohabitation necessarily implies a knowledge of the wife’s degradation, and a participation in the wages of her shame. Nor will any argument, however plausible, succeed in removing from the public mind the conviction that the man is far the more guilty party of the two, and he can not escape the suspicion that he was the primary agent in leading his wife to prostitution, or, in legal parlance, he was “an accessory before the fact,” While such a consideration will not exonerate the woman from her offenses, it may be justly pleaded in extenuation; although it will not prove her guiltless, it will sink him to the lowest depths of disgrace.
The conduct of husbands is alleged in a majority of the cases as the cause of separation; two hundred and thirty-five out of four hundred and nineteen women give the following causes:
| Husbands refused to support their wives | 29 | |
| "deserted their wives | 60 | |
| """" to live with other women | 43 | |
| Ill-usage of husbands | 103 | |
| Total | 235 |
The cases wherein “intemperance,” “infidelity,” or “no cause assigned” were replied, are vague, and may be construed to attach blame to either, or both.
Sufficient has been proved to show that in many cases prostitution among married women is the result of circumstances which must have exercised a very powerful influence over them. The refusal of a husband to support his wife, his desertion of her, or an act of adultery with another woman, are each occurrences which must operate injuriously upon the mind of any female, and, by the keen torture such outrages inflict on the sensitiveness of her nature, must drive her into a course of dissipation. Many women thus circumstanced have actually confessed that they made the first false step while smarting from injuries inflicted by their natural protectors, with the idea of being revenged upon their brutal or faithless companions for their unkindness. Morality will argue, and very truly, that this is no excuse for crime; but much allowance must be made for the extreme nature of the provocation, and the fact that most of these women are uneducated, and have not sufficient mental or moral illumination to reason correctly upon the nature and consequences of their voluntary debauchery, or even to curb the violence of their passions.
“Ill-usage of husbands,” a crime particularly rife in England, and apparently fast becoming naturalized here, also stands as a prominent cause of vice, and is one which can not be too pointedly condemned. It strikes at the root of the social fabric, and must invariably be denounced both on account of its enormity as an offense, and of its almost inevitable consequences to the woman, a sense of degradation, too often followed by the sacrifice of rectitude as the only means to escape such brutal tyranny. Without advocating capital punishment, it may be allowable to suggest the query whether our city would not be benefited if all such unmanly offenders against propriety were to be tried by a jury of married women, and hanged without benefit of clergy.
The following table will conclude this section:
Question. If widowed, how long has your husband been dead?