FORGIVING WOMEN. (COURT CIRCULAR.)

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 411, 2 January 1875, Page 2

FORGIVING WOMEN. (COURT CIRCULAR.)

There was a notice in the police reports a few days ago which ought naturally to have evoked a fewreflections from an intelligent reader. An unhappy wife had been most brutally ill-treated by her husband, and, as is often the case, was most unwilling to appear against him. But she was compelled to do so, and presented in court a most lamentable appearance — the results of the man's brutality. She piteously appealed to the magistrate, contused and mutilated as she was, and declared she did not wish to do anything against her husband. " It was all her fault," she said ; u she had aggravated him." So far the story is not an uncommon one. Those who have had experience in such matters know well that there are many and complicated reasons which prompt a wife in such a position to endeavour to protect the husband who has so brutally ill-used her. She has to think of her wretched children, crying for bread, if the man who wins it for them, and so constitutes his right to half-murder her, is sent to prison. She has to think, moreover, of her husband's relations, who are in all probability neighbours, and who will take care to impress upon her, in a practical manner, the enormity of her crime in defending herself from his blows. But in this case there was something peculiar, or else the stale repetition of daily assaults by husbands on wives would scarcely deserve any serious notice. To continue, therefore, the story, the magistrate was totally unmoved at the unhappy woman's tears and professions of love for the wretch in the dock, and sentenced liim at once in twenty-one days' imprisonment for his dastardly assault. His worship went even further, and presented the wife with a donation of ten shillings. The woman hurried out of court with this unusal wealth in her pocket, and at once purchased a comfortable meal for her husband before he would have to begin his diurnal career oi simple prison fare, We are not concerned here to consider what sentence might fairly and justly meet the atrocious cases of almost wife-murder which daily occur ; not to argue on the question, which appears naturally most difficult to magistrates, as to how to meet such cases as this ; where the wife was presumably dependent on her husband's work. But one side of feminine nature, iv its less educated and refined condition, is so clearly manifested in this somewhat pathetic story, that we cannot help remembering how one has observed before that, as a mle, in the lower classes, the worse a wife is treated — the more she is bullied, treated as a nonentity or an animal, her tastes ignored, her wishes disregarded — the more she loves the man who is the cause of all her wrongs. If a woman has been wronged beyond all reparation, whom will she love best? Not the one \ who would wipe her tears away, atone for previous J wiong, and forgive her for every weakness. But the man whom she has to thank for disgrace and ruin. We would commend to all the upholders of wo1 man's rights the story of this loving, ill-used wifo, who thus figured this week in the police-courts. They may say she was a wretched, craven specimen of her class- that she had no education — in short, did not know better. It is very likely this is true. But there seems somehow, in spite of education, to be a longing, pitiful, wo:ik, though pasdanajy^kive I'Hiird in r-vpvv woman's ],p.n't ~ TJ *