In Madrid there is a hospital for foundlings, which are said to amount to about four thousand annually. These are actual foundlings, exposed publicly to the compassion of the charitable. It is principally served by the Sisters of Charity. The infants are intrusted to nurses, and at the age of seven they are transferred to the Desamparados (unprotected) college, where they receive instruction in the simpler rudiments of education, and their religious and moral training is cared for. There is also an asylum to which others are drafted to learn some practical handicraft, such as glove-making, straw-hat making, embroidery, etc., and which seems, in a great measure, a self-supporting institution.
There are three Magdalen Hospitals: St. Nicholas de Barr, founded in 1691 for women of the better class, who are banished for misconduct from the homes of their husbands and fathers; that of the Arrepentidos, for penitents; and that of the Recogidos, founded in 1637, for the correction of women sent there by their families, in order that they may be induced to return to the paths of virtue.
CHAPTER XIII.
PORTUGAL.
Conventual Life in 1780.—Depravity of Women.—Laws against Adultery and Rape.—Venereal Disease.—Illegitimacy.—Foundling Hospitals of Lisbon and Oporto.—Singular Institutions for Wives.
A writer on Portugal, in the year 1780, complains of the scandalous licentiousness of the monks and nuns, of whom there were no less than two hundred and fifty thousand in a population of two millions. It is said that the convent Odivelas, the harem of the monarch John V., contained three hundred women, accounted the most beautiful and accomplished courtesans in the kingdom. The great Marquis de Pombal suppressed many of these convents, and was the general reformer of the religious orders.
Of the effect of such an example from such quarters on the population at that time, sunk, as they were, in the most imbecile ignorance, little need be said. The women of Portugal were reputed to surpass all European females in gallantry, and their attractions were such that only one interview was necessary to complete the conquest. To this condition of common immorality, the rigor of their husbands and male relations may have contributed not a little. They are said to have been outrageously jealous, and to have made no scruple of murdering any stranger who gave them even the weakest grounds of suspicion.
In the fundamental laws of Portugal, promulgated in 1143, it is enacted that, “if a married woman commit adultery, and the husband complain to the judge, and the judge is the king, the adulterer and adulteress shall be condemned to the flames; but if the husband retain the wife, neither party shall be punished.”
In the case of a rape perpetrated on the person of a lady of rank, all the property of the ravisher went to the lady; and in case the female were not noble, the man, without regard to his rank, was obliged to marry her.