R. B.: “My husband brought me here (a house of ill fame). I did not know what kind of a place it was. He lives with me, and I follow prostitution.” Another variety of unnatural conduct. The wife in this case was a very good-looking young woman, not exceeding eighteen years of age; the husband held a respectable and well-paid employment, and was in possession of ample means to support her. By false representations he induced her, within three months after marriage, to board in a fashionable house of prostitution. She soon discovered its character, but eventually succumbed to his orders, and became guilty. He resides with her, and is supported by her. What language can be used adequately to denounce such a cold-blooded piece of treachery on the part of a wretch claiming to be human?
L. W.: “I came to this city, from Illinois, with my husband. When we got here he deserted me. I have two children dependent on me.” This man brought his wife from a distant state to a strange city, where she had no friends nor relatives to advise and assist her, and there abandoned her, with two helpless children, to the mercy of the world. Had he left her where she had been living previously, it is possible she might have found sufficient friends to assist her until she was able to support herself; but with a refinement of cruelty he transferred her to a place where she was unknown, and then effected his escape. The entire circumstances favor the supposed existence of a determination to abandon her as soon as they arrived in New York, where he could act thus with more safety than in her native place.
C. H.: “I was married when I was seventeen years old, and have had three children. The two boys are living now; the girl is dead. My oldest boy is nearly five years old, and the other one is eighteen months. My husband is a sailor. We lived very comfortably till my last child was born, and then he began to drink very hard, and did not support me, and I have not seen him or heard any thing about him for six months. After he left me I tried to keep my children by washing or going out to day’s work, but I could not earn enough. I never could earn more than two or three dollars a week when I had work, which was not always. My father and mother died when I was a child. I had nobody to help me, and could not support my children, so I came to this place. My boys are now living in the city, and I support them with what I earn by prostitution. It was only to keep them that I came here.” These were the words used by an honest, sorrowful looking woman encountered, in the course of this investigation, in the fourth police district of the city. No reasonable doubt can be entertained of the truth of the story; the manner in which she told it plainly indicated that she was narrating facts. Some inquiries were made respecting her of the keeper of the house, and he (for it was a man) stated that he knew her story to be correct. He had at first employed her as a servant because he wished to help her, but the wages he could pay were insufficient to support her children, and she eventually prostituted herself because she could earn more at this horrible calling, and was thus enabled to discharge her maternal duty. But at what a sacrifice was this obtained! In order to feed her helpless offspring she was forced to yield her honor; to prevent them suffering from the pains of hunger, she voluntarily chose to endure the pangs of a guilty conscience; to prolong their lives she periled her own. And at the time when this alternative was forced upon her, the husband was lavishing his money for intoxicating liquor. If she sinned—and this fact can not be denied, however charity may view it—it was the non-performance of his duty that urged, nay, positively forced her to sin. She must endure the punishment of her offenses, but, after reading her simple, heart-rending statement, let casuists decide what amount of condemnation will rest upon the man whose desertion compelled her to violate the law of chastity in order to support his children.
E. W.: “My husband had another wife when I married him. I left him when I found this out. I was pregnant by him, and had no other way to live than by prostitution.” In point of law, this is not a married woman, the existence of the former wife rendering the second union invalid; but this is no excuse for the man’s conduct; in fact, it materially aggravates his guilt. In the first place, he deserts a woman whom he was legally bound to support, leaving her to battle her way through life, to resist the temptations which would be sure to assail her, careless whether she lived or died, and heedless whether she retained her character or sank into vice; and then, with the greatest nonchalance, goes through the ceremony of marriage with another woman. It is easy to imagine the feelings of the latter when she discovered the fraud which had been practiced to secure her hand, and the indignation which caused her to leave him immediately, notwithstanding her condition; nor will it require much stretch of fancy to picture the mental suffering she endured, her agony during the hour of nature’s trial, before she consented to earn a precarious living as a prostitute. Such cases are of frequent occurrence, and even the probability of a criminal indictment is insufficient to deter some men. No punishment could be too severe for such offenses, even considering them without any reference to this particular instance, because they pervert one of our most solemn contracts, and destroy all confidence in the security of the marriage tie.
C. H.: “My husband was a drunkard, and beat me.” How much of misery and crime is contained in these few words! Either of the vices practiced by this fellow is enough to make a woman wretched; the combination is sufficient to drive her mad. She would doubtless sit and ponder during the long and weary night hours when he was carousing with his drunken companions, and would contrast her present wretched state with the happiness of early days. Her thoughts would revert to the time he won her love, to the day on which he brought her to his home a bride, and then she would cast her eyes around the room, now robbed of almost every thing portable to supply his insane appetite for liquor, and a heavy sigh would burst from her heart. But still she would continue her sad reminiscences, and think of the kindness he displayed then, and of his brutal ferocity now—would remember his considerate tenderness and compare it with his maniac fury. And then something would whisper to her, “Why do you endure it?” and her woman’s nature would be aroused, resistance would take the place of submission, and she would leave her home and him who had desecrated it, and immolate herself upon the altar of vice, a victim to her husband’s drunkenness and cruelty.
C. N.: “My husband left me because I was sickly and could not do hard work.” This woman’s husband may be pictured as a lazy, worthless fellow; probably one who married not to secure a helpmate and a partner, but to obtain a slave. Her health would not allow her to perform as much drudgery as he expected; the speculation did not turn out as well as he had anticipated, and he left her destitute, to starve or sin, as she thought fit.
P. T.: “My husband was intemperate, and turned out to be a thief. He was sent to prison.” Still another victim of a drunken husband, but he carried his vicious habits to a point where the laws of his country would reach him. Had he merely deserted his wife, nobody would have thought it his business to arrest him, but he stole some person’s property, and all the enginery of the law was forthwith arrayed against him. In the one instance, his conduct condemns his wife to shame in this world and perhaps perdition in the next, and the good-tempered public looks quietly on and says nothing. In the other case, he defrauds his neighbor of some dollars and cents, and the indignant community demands his condign punishment! What conclusion can be drawn from these facts? Honor, character, and life are ruined, and the offender escapes: money is stolen, and he is punished! Is money more valuable than the character and life of woman?
It requires no argument to prove that when the care of a child is assumed by its relatives, the parental obligations also devolve upon them; nor can there be any difference of opinion as to the duty of relations to assist, to the utmost of their power, any children whom death or other circumstances may have deprived of their natural protectors. Were not these principles generally recognized, all large cities would be crowded with destitute orphans. The beneficial results often arising from such guardianships argue very strongly in their favor; but still the imperative duty is frequently evaded, or acknowledged and made the opportunity for an exhibition of tyranny which naturally tends to the encouragement of vice. Take the following cases in illustration:
J. F.: “I support my aunt.” In this case the duties of the aunt were not merely evaded, but she adds to her neglect a positive approval of the girl’s abandoned life, by voluntarily receiving a portion of her earnings. What species of education she bestowed upon her niece may be inferred from its results. Such disclosures are almost too disgusting to be criticised.
S. B.: “My parents were dead. I came to this country with an uncle and aunt, who ill-used me from the time I landed till I ran away.” The death of her parents should have been a passport to the affection of the relatives to whose charge she was intrusted, but, instead of producing such an effect, they brought her to a strange land, and practiced a succession of cruelties, until she could endure them no longer. It is more than probable that this was a plan intended to drive her from their home. They neither acknowledged their duty to supply the places of the father and mother she had lost, nor did they recognize the force of relationship, which, at least, should have protected her from positive unkindness. Nor did they possess any of those feelings of sympathy which every well-disposed person must entertain toward an orphan. They could not have been unaware of the probability of her falling into bad company and vicious habits if she left their care, but no regard for her happiness or character seems to have entered into their calculations, which may have been somewhat in this form: She is an expense to us, so we will contrive to drive her away; if she can make her living honestly, so much the better; if she turns out a prostitute, that is her own concern. It was not solely “her own concern,” but it involved them also in its consequences, through their agency in its accomplishment, and, morally speaking, they are as liable for her ruin as if they had actually, and not indirectly, caused it.