WOMEN AND GUILLOTINE.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1869, 1 October 1913, Page 8

WOMEN AND GUILLOTINE.

CHIVALRY NOT WANTED.

* Woman's right to be guillotined when she has been sentenced to death (says tho Paris correspondent of tho " Daily Telegraph") is discussed by a number of French suffragists, nearly all of whom insist that this is one of the most essential rights of women. For very many years it has been the French practice never to inflict capital punishment on women. Wlhen sentence of death is passed it is always commuted into penal servitude for life. Madame Schmahl, ah Englishwoman long settled in France, who has done more practical work for women's rights than any Frenchwoman —as.she succeeded in getting the measure through Parliament giving a married woman sole ownership of her earnings— writes: —"Physical weakness cannot be an excuse for a guilty woman, since she has shown that she had sufficient strength to comnr't the erimo for which she has been sentenced to death."

Women on their trial never plead their sex as an excuse. It is tho judge and jury, who are influenced by the question of sex. They know more than anybody else tho innumerable injustices inflicted upon women by tho laws which recognise equality between tho sexes only in the case of punishment. Tho Duchess d'Uzes's,reply is short and to the point. "It seems to me that the answer to your question is simple enough. Le crime n'a pas de sexe." One of the now militant French suffragists, Madame Auclert, writes:— "Beth sexes must be equal bofore tho ballot-box—and before the guillotine." Dr. Pelletier, another suffragist and a lady M D., says:—"The sort of gallantry by which women condemned to death aro let off from tho guillotine is an insult to the feminine sex, just asall gallantry is." Madame Oddo-Deflou', who is presidont of the "French Group of Studies for the Civil Bights of Women," holds the extreme view that "if a woman has murdered, even though it be her husband whom she has murdered, she must pay tjie penalty according to law. It would not displease us even that women's crimes and misdemeanours should be, punished more severely than thoso of men, for woman represents the moral clement in society." Madame Vincent, president of the French Woman's Suffrage Union, is opposed to capital punishment, and in any case " considers that so long as woman takes no part in legislation it is right that she should not suffer the death penalty when condemned to it." The novelist, Madame Daniel Lesuour, has nover dreamt of asking for equality of tho sexes, up to and including tho guillotino. "In all sincerity, Ido not think that the most violent feminist—and I am not that—can really consider that her theories ha.ve scored becauso a woman has been guillotined just like a man. Thoro is'one thing I am quite certain abont, 'and that is that the woman condemned to death would not be of that opinion." Madame LeroyAllais, an authoress, holds much the same viow. "A murderess is as guilty as a murderer; but so long as woman is treated as an inforior by the laws men have made she must bo considered less guilty in the eyes of the law, - and must therefore bo less punished."