SURPLUS WOMEN IN ENGLAND.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1565, 24 February 1879, Page 4

SURPLUS WOMEN IN ENGLAND.

[“ Quarterly Review.”] According to the “ Population Returns ” of 1851, as quoted by Mr Greg, there were in England and Wales at the time no less that 1,248,000 women single between the age of 20 and 40. Reckoning for the numbers who in England marry after 20 this total would be considerably diminished ; but, even so, it is believed that the permanent number of the unmarried women may be accepted as about three-quarters of a million. Nor is the fact that the estimate was made twentyseven years ago likely to have reduced the amount, but rather the reverse. This discloses what must be called a strange social phenomenon, suggestive of desolate positions and bitter needs, which has to be viewed under two aspects. Woman is the helpmeet of man, but man is the support hitherto deemed necessary for woman. Both aspects, in the tremendous extent of their present nonfulfilment, are matters of the gravest and of equal importance ; but we have now only to do with the last. Assuming that the majority of these three-quarters of a million women are independent in circumstances, or so placed—especially in lower ranks—as to support themselves, there still remains a body of single helplessness, living on shifts,! alms votes, and institutions, fit for no work, and eager to take any, of which society at every turn is made aware. There are other ties, it is true, and of a sacred nature, between men and women; but the fact is too evident that what there is no husband to supply is but imperfectly supplemented by father or brother. It is a forlorn sight to se* maidens “ withering on the stalk;” hut it is a piteous one to see them starving on it. Poor ladies—for of such this class is principally made up—may truly say, “ All things are against us,” for the parents, who are bound to protect and provide, are too often both the primary and ultimate cause of the misery of their daughters. Misfortunes are, it is true, sometimes of a kind which cannot be foreseen or prevented ; but the breakdown of all power and resources for meeting them can be prevented. False indulgence and false authority are the rocks on which thousands of these souls are wrecked. In some homes—and there are too many of them—youg women in the sense of thinking or acting for themselves, may be said never to come of age. They are lapped in a luxury which the stoppage of one heart or one bank suddenly brings to an end, and they are kept in leading-strings or go-carts which prevent their realizing the intention of their own limbs. The incapacity of some parents to perceive when their daughters have come to years of discretion—the jealousy to retain their authority over women more fitted by age to lead them —is a feature peculiar to English life, French mothers have as M. Mohl used to express it, a ferocite which dictatt-s the choice in marriage both to son and daughter, and keeps their authority over both, even when married; but they do not turn their daughts?> out, single and

dowerless, into the world as English parents do. We may rail against French matrimonial arrangements ; but, when contrasted with the sufferings of thousands of our countrywomen, the marriage de eonvenance rises in the scale. The case is simple to state. If we accustom a lap-dog to live on chickens, cikes, and cream —to warm washings, aromatic soaps, blue ribbons, and soft rugs—we do perhaps a silly thing ; but if after all tills petting we turn him out in the cold without a bone wo do a cruel thing. Nor is the matter amended if we have drilled him into perfect obedience, taught him to bark at certain signs, to sit up and beg, and to keep a biscuit on his nose till he is told to eat it; for all these arts and accomplishment will neither got him a crumb nor spare him a kick in the crowded streets. But this is virtually the practice of many parents towards their grown-up daughters, who are kept in a kind of stalled ease and plenty, are required to look to them for the commonest decision, and who haying been disciplined exactly in those qualities which will least help them in the battle of life, wake up one sad morning with the bitter blast of poverty blowing upon luxurious habits, and with the consciousness of not excelling in one single thing that they can exchange for bread.