NAWSA      SUBJECT FILE      English Women And the Law

English Women and the Law

ENGLISH WOMEN AND
THE LAW
LADY LAURA McLAREN'S Summary of 
the Economic and Legal Disabilities of the 
Women of England- How the Old Law of Coverture 
Puts a Premium on Single-Blessedness

By IMOGEN B. OAKLEY

      Are English women at a disadvantage under 
the laws of Britain? Is there any real 
reason for the rebellion which the women 
of that country are mothering, by constitutional 
and unconstitutional procedure?
ls there any pressure of injustice back of
all the commotion? Are English women 
merely restless and discontented, merely
trying to be men? Are their interests protected 
by the law of the land under which 
they are taxed and punished? Just what is
the actual situation with regard to English 
women and the law? 
      These are the questions which Lady Laura 
McLaren answers in a pamphlet, entitled
“The Women’s Charter of Rights and Liberties,” 
which has been accepted as a clear
and definite summary of the economic and
legal disabilities of English women and of
what they are asking from Parliament in
the way of relief. First of all, the Charter 
asks that the whole law of coverture for
married women be declared obsolete, and 
abolished, with all the disabilities that spring
therefrom. The old law of coverture suspends 
the civil and legal existence of a
woman during marriage, and prevents her
from taking any legal action on her own behalf 
except through her husband and with
his consent.

ENGLISH COMMON LAW.

      “The husband has, by the common law
of England, the right to the custody and
control of his wife. She is under his guardianship 
and he is entitled to prevent her
from indiscriminate intercourse with the
world.” Successive acts of Parliament have
removed many of the disabilities of a wife
arising under coverture, but the doctrine of
coverture itself has never been repudiated,
and still remains a hindrance to that equality 
before the law which the women of
England are now demanding. The Married
Woman's Property Act, for example, recognizes 
that a woman, though married, is capable 
of holding and managing her own property 
[and?] if her husband embezzle that property 
[there is?] no redress  before the law;
 nor can her husband be held guilty of any
 wrong done her by malicious libel.
      Again, various acts of Parliament have
declared that no person possessing the prescribed 
qualifications for a local franchise
shall be disqualified by sex, the obvious intention 
being to allow all women, married
or single, who pay rates and taxes, to vote
at all municipal elections. The old law
of coverture intervenes, however, with the
result that married women, except in London, 
are excluded from the privilege. By
an act of Parliament passed in 1907, women 
are permitted to be members of town
councils, and at present twenty women are
serving as town councillors, to the admitted
advantage of their respective communities,
but owing to the law of coverture, married
women are not eligible to election, no matter
how well qualified they may be. It is
only the unmarried women who has a recognized 
legal existence.

THE WIFE-BEATERS. 

      lt is the law of coverture, too, which is 
primarily responsible for the amount of
wife-beating which prevails in England.
The lower classes are thoroughly ingrained 
with the idea that a wife is a chattel, on
much the same plane as a horse or a dog,
and when she is not obedient she must be
chastised. Though judges and magistrates
of the present day sometimes exceed the
letter of the law, and sentence a brutal
husband to fine or imprisonment, in too
many cases the wife-beater need fear nothing 
worse than a reprimand.
      The charter asks that fathers and mothers 
shall be joint guardians of their children. 
Bills to this effect have been repeatedly 
brought before Parliament but
have never been able to command a majority. 
The father remains sole guardian
of all children born in wedlock. He alone
decrees their education, their religion, their
profession. No promise made by the husband, 
whether before or after marriage,
even when set down in writing, can bind
him as to the religion in which the children 
are to be brought up. Cases are on
record where the man changed his religion 
after the birth of a number of children, 
and with the sanction of the law
removed the children from their mother's
care and had them brought up by strangers.
Children may not even be vaccinated on
their mother’s request. Should the father
[ happen to be absent his written consent 
to the vaccination must be shown to the 
health officer. ]

[The charter asks that the ancient right of wives
to dower shall be restored and shall be made 
independent of the husband's disposition whether 
by deed or will. Under the present law, the husband 
and father may absolutely disinherit both wife and 
children. "England is the only civilized country in the 
world," says Dr. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, "which gives 
power to a husband, no matter how wealthy he may be, 
to make a will leaving all his property to somebody other 
than members of his own family. If a man dies intestate, 
the widow is never awarded more than a third of the 
property; if a woman dies intestate the husband gets 
everything." Moreover, the law which allows the husband to
leave his wife and children penniless after his death, imposes 
upon the wife the duty of maintaining the children. The children 
are his and his alone, says the law, never]

[never]theless he may disinherit them, and the 
mother, to whom the law expressly declares 
they do not belong, is compelled by
that same law to provide for them.
      Lady McLaren says: “We are struck with
the strangely penniless condition of English 
women as contrasted with French women!” 
In France as soon as a girl is
born it becomes the great object of her
father and mother to provide her with the
dot, which will place her beyond the reach
of want and enable her to become a partner 
in marriage instead of a dependent.
Quite the contrary is the case in England.
The resources of the family are lavished 
upon the son. His claims invariably
precede those of a daughter, and in cases
of intestacy landed property goes to sons
before daughters. The charter asks that
a wife who devotes her whole time to housekeeping 
and the care of the children shall
have a claim upon her husband during his
life, and upon his estate after death, for
a sum calculated upon the wages of a
housekeeper in her station of life, always
provided that she has not received any
other personal allowance.

HER MAINTENANCE.
      Under the present law the wife has nothing 
but an indefinite claim for maintenance, 
consisting of just what her husband 
chooses to give her in his own way
and in his own time. So long as she
lives with him no legal machinery exists
by which she can compel him to maintain
her and the children. Her only resource,
should he refuse to contribute to his family's 
support, is to go to the workhouse
with her children and trust to the Guardians 
to sue her husband for their maintenance. 
It often happens that the Guardians
find it easier and cheaper to support the 
wife and children in the workhouse than
to find and prosecute the husband. The
Charter advocates the adoption of a law 
similar to one in successful operation in 
Germany, which will enable the wife to
apply to a magistrate for an order enforcing 
maintenance, such maintenance to 
be recovered from the employer of the 
husband out of the wages due to him. 
      When a wife is not only a housekeeper,
but an actual partner in her husband's
business, the injustice of the present law
is still more apparent. A farmer's wife,
who has charge of the dairy and goes to
market with the produce; a shopkeeper's
wife, who keeps the books and attends to
the correspondence, is undoubtedly her
husband's business partner, and is so recognized 
in France. In England, however,
the law makes no allowance for the female
partner's industry, but awards to the man
the whole profits of the business.
      The Charter asks that the education of
girls be regarded as of equal importance
to that of boys. Under the present laws, by
far the greater part of the public money
devoted to education is spent upon boys.
The teachers in boys’ elementary schools
are better qualified and better paid than in
the elementary schools for girls. The
money expended on secondary education
for boys is greatly in excess of what is
spent for secondary education of girls. 
Oxford and Cambridge emphasize what tremendous 
advantages have been showered
for generation after generation upon men
alone. Hundreds of technical schools exist 
for the proper training of boys, but
girls are sent out to earn their living
without any preliminary training of hand
or brain. Even in the London County
Council Technical Institutes and Schools of 
Art, a quite disproportionate amount of
space and teaching has been given to men. 

A VAGUE SUPPOSITION.

      Women are vaguely supposed to be provided 
for by marriage, but more than half
of the adult women in England are unmarried, 
and the greater number of them
must earn their own living—moreover, very
many married women work for weekly
wages. Thus a great army of women, mostly 
untrained, throng the labor market, and,
being untrained, they can hardly command
wages high enough to support healthy life.
The Royal Commission which reported on
the subject declared that the average wage
of the woman worker is not more than seven 
shillings a week.
      To the theory that women should be
kept out of the labor market altogether
and always be supported by men, there are
 two unanswerable objections. First, men
refuse to keep all women- they support
[only those who please them, or who are very 
near relatives- and, second, women prefer to 
work and keep themselves, if allowed the necessary 
training to do so successfully. The laws and 
customs which declare training unnecessary to young 
women because they are likely to marry, have 
reacted severely upon the men who are responsible 
for them. It is the untrained, under-educated women 
who make shipwrecks of homes. If an untrained girl 
cannot earn a living wage, neither is she fitted to take 
charge of the household of a wage-earning man.]

[Lady Bell, who has made an exhaustive study of 
workingmen's homes in the manufacturing district 
around Middlesborough, says: "My conviction is, 
that under present conditions there will never be 
more than a certain proportion of women who can 
carry the immense burden allotted to the workingman's 
wife." Young women wholly untrained in hygiene, 
cookery, or household economics marry laboring men]
who cannot earn more than two or three
pounds a week. In addition to bearing from
six to a dozen children, they do all the 
work of the household, the sewing, cleaning,
cooking, washing, nursing of the sick. They 
go out charring when their husbands are
out of work or on a strike- and many of 
them work more or less regularly in factories. 
Small wonder that the children are
neglected and sickly, and that infant mortality 
is appallingly high. A physician
quoted by Lady Bell says that "there is little 
happiness in a laboring man's family
after a second child is born, for the simple
reason that the woman is overburdened
with the steadily accumulating work."
      The charter asks that the State provide
the best possible training in domestic science 
for all women, for the very reason
that they are likely to marry and become
the mothers of the next generation, and,
on account of the burdens which press more
and more heavily each year upon the workingman's 
wife, the charter advises that public 
laundries where washing may be done
cheaply and hygienically be established in
all manufacturing cities, that public 
creches and kindergartens be maintained for 
the children of those women who are obliged 
to go out to work, and that public eating-houses 
be provided, where workingmen
and their families may get a cheaper and
better cooked dinner than the overburdened 
mother of a large family can possibly
have the time to prepare. Such eating-houses 
are well patronized in France and
Germany, and besides supplying food in
greater variety and more cheaply than is 
possible in a single family, they afford opportunities 
for social intercourse and harmless 
recreation that are sorely needed in 
England. One great advantage of an industrial 
training that would enable a woman 
to earn a living wage is that it would
arm her against the temptations of an immoral 
life. The white slave traffic thrives
upon the ignorant, untrained girl.
      “Germany, Switzerland, and France are
far ahead of England in technical schools
for girls,” says Lady McLaren; “English
women cannot compete with French women
in the higher branches of dressmaking, embroidery, 
flower-making, artistic handiwork,
or cooking.” Once equipped as a skilled
worker, a woman becomes independent. She
is able to keep herself before marriage.
She can wait and select the man she prefers. 
She is able to return to her trade
should her marriage prove unhappy. She is
able to help the family should the husband
have ill health. As a widow, she is able
to take up again her skilled work and to
support herself without becoming a burden
to any one. This is all that economic independence 
means, and without economic
independence every woman is handicapped 
in the struggle for existence. 
      The Charter asks that the Government
appoint a Commission of women and arm
it with authority and money to formulate
and carry out measures to check the trade
in vice. Men alone have failed to find a
remedy for the social evil. The aim, 
consciously or unconsciously, has been to make
vice safe for men, and the methods of
doing so have forced women into the deepest
degradation, and denied them all chance
of escape.
      The Charter asks that the father of an
illegitimate child be held responsible for
any injury to mother or child arising from
his neglect. Under the present law a father 
can be made to contribute five shillings a
week to the support of an illegitimate
child, provided a clear case can be made
out against him, but the mother cannot
claim maintenance for herself during the 
time she is unable to work. The illegitimate 
child is held by the law to be the 
child of  no one. No right over it is given
to the mother, nor may it inherit her property; 
nevertheless, the law holds that she
is responsible for its maintenance and, 
should it die through her neglect or by her
wilful act, she must be indicted for manslaughter 
or murder. Domestic servants
furnish the great majority of the cases of
infanticide. Betrayed by the master or son 
of the house, they lose at once their characters, 
their situation, and their hope of
future employment; at the same time, the
sole responsibility of maintaining a second
life is forced upon them.

HER FATE AND HIS.

If, driven to desperation, a girl destroys
her child, the law requires that she be sentenced 
to death, but to the man who has
ruined her life, the law metes out no condemnation. 
Not many years ago a bill
passed the House of Commons providing
that the miserable young mother who had
made away with her illegitimate child
might be imprisoned for life instead of
suffering the death penalty, but the bill
was thrown out by the Lords and the Commons 
did not press it. It is noteworthy
that the Bishops voted solidly for the death
penalty. They could not forget that the
Mosaic law required that a woman found 
guilty of adultery should be stoned to
death—but they did forget, with singular
unanimity, that the same stern law decreed 
that the man who shared in the

erties," which has been accepted as a clear and definite summary of the economic and legal disabilities of English women and of what they are asking from Parliament in the way of relief. First of all, the Charter asks that the whole law of coverture for married women be declared obsolete, and abolished, with all the disabilities that spring therefrom. The old law of coverture suspends the cibil and legal existence of a woman during marriage, and prevents her from taking any legal action on her own behalf except through her husband and with his consent. 
ENGLISH COMMON LAW.
"The husband has, by the common law of England, the right to the custody and control of his wife. She is under his guardianship and he is entitled to prevent her from indiscriminate intercourse with the world." Successive acts of Parliament have removed many of the disabilities of a wife arising under coverture, but the doctrine of coverture itself has never been repudiated, and still remains a hindrance to that equality before the law which the women of England are now demanding. The Married Woman's Property Act, for example, recognizes that a woman, though married, is capable of holding and managing her own property but if her husband embezzle that property there is no redress before the law; nor can her husband be held guilty of any wrong done her by malicious libel. 
Again, various acts of Parliament have declared that no person possessing the prescribed qualifications for a local franchise shall be disqualified by sex, the obvious intention being to allow all women, married or single, who pay rates and taxes, to vote at all municipal elections. The old law of coverture intervenes, however, with the result that married women, except in London, are excluded from the privilege. By an act of Parliament passed in 1907, women are permitted to be members of town councils, and at present twenty women are serving as town councillors, to the admitted advantage of their respective communities, but owing to the law of coverture, married women are not eligible to election, no matter how well qualified they may be. It is only the unmarried woman who has a recognized legal existence. 
THE WIFE-BEATERS
It is the law of coverture, too, which is primarily responsible for the amount of wife-beating which prevails in England. The lower classes are thoroughly ingrained with the idea that a wife is a chattel, on much the same plane as a horse or a dog, and when she is not obedient she must be chastised. Though judges and magistrates of the present day sometimes exceed the letter of the law, ad sentence a brutal husband to find or imprisonment, in too many cases the wife-beater need fear nothing worse than a reprimand. 
The charter asks that fathers and mothers shall be joint guardians of their children. Bills to this effect have been repeatedly brought before Parliament but have never been able to command a majority. The father remains sole guardian of all children born in wedlock. He alone decrees their education, their religion, their profession. No promise made by the husband, whether before or after marriage, even when set down in writing, can bind him as to the religion in which the children are to be brought up. Cases are on record where the man changed his religion after the birth of a number of children, and with the sanction of the law removed the children from their mother's care and had them brought up by strangers. Children may not even be vaccinated on their mother's request. Should the father happen to be absent his written consent to the vaccination must be shown to the health officer. 
The charter asks that the ancient right of wives to dower shall be restored and shall be made independent of the husband's disposition whether by deed or will. Under the present law, the husband and father may absolutely disinherit both wife and children. "England is the only civilized country in the world," says Dr. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, "which gives power to a husband, no matter how wealthy he may be, to make a will leaving all his property to somebody other than members of his own family. If a man dies intestate, the widow is never awarded more than a third of the property; if a woman dies intestate the husband gets everything." Moreover, the law which allows the husband to leave his wife and children penniless after his death, imposes upon the wife the duty of maintaining the children. The children are his and his alone, says the law, never ------ of intestacy landed property goes to sons before daughters. The charter asks that a wife who devotes her whole time to housekeeping and the care of the children shall have a claim upon her husband during his life, and upon his estate after death, for a sum calculated upon the wages of a housekeeper in her station of life, always provided that she has not received any other personal allowance.
HER MAINTENANCE
Under the present law the wife has nothing but an indefinite claim for maintenance, consisting of just what her husband chooses to give her in his own way and in his own time. So long as she lives with him no legal machinery exists by which she can compel him to maintain her and the children. Her only resource, should he refuse to contribute to his family's support, is to go to the workhouse with her children and trust to the Guardians to sue her husband for their maintenance. It often happens that the Guardians find it easier and cheaper to support the wife and children in the workhouse than to find and prosecute the husband. The Charter advocates the adoption of a law similar to one in successful operation in Germany, which will enable the wife to apply to a magistrate for an order enforcing maintenance, such maintenance to be recovered from the employer of the husband cut of the wages due to him. 
When a wife is not only a housekeeper, but an actual partner in her husband's business, the injustice of the present law is still more apparent. A farmer's wife who has charge of the dairy and goes to market with the produce; a shopkeeper's wife, who keeps the books and attends to the correspondence, is undoubtedly her husband's business partner, and is so recognized in France. In England, however, the law makes no allowance for the female partner's industry, but awards to the man the whole profits of the business.
The Charter asks that the education of girls be regarded as of equal importance to that of boys. Under the present laws, by far the greater part of the public money devoted to education is spent upon boys. The teachers in boys' elementary schools are better qualified and better paid than in the elementary schools for girls. The money expended on secondary education for boys is greatly in excess of what is spent for secondary education of girls. Oxford and Cambridge emphasize what tremendous advantages have been showered for generation after generation upon men alone.  Hundreds of technical schools exist for the proper training of boys, but girls are sent out to earn their living without any preliminary training of hand or brain. Even in the London County Council Technical Institutes and Schools of Art, a quite disproportionate amount of space and teaching has been given to men. 
A VAGUE SUPPOSITION
Women are vaguely supposed to be provided for by marriage, but more than half of the adult women in England are unmarried, and the greater number of them must earn their own living-moreover, very many married women work for weekly wages. Thus a great army of women, mostly untrained, throng the labor market, and, being untrained, they can hardly command wages high enough to support healthy life. The Royal Commission which reported on the subject declared that the average wage of the woman worker is not more than seven shillings a week. 
To the theory that women should be kept out of the labor market altogether and always be supported by men, there are two unanswerable objections. First, men refuse to keep all women- they support only those who please them, or who are very near relatives- and, second women prefer to work and keep themselves, if allowed the necessary training to do so successfully. The laws and customs which declare training unnecessary to young women because they are likely to marry, have reacted severely upon the men who are responsible for them. It is the untrained, under-educated women who make shipwrecks of homes. If an untrained girl cannot earn a living wage, neither is she fitted to take charge of the household of a wage-earning man.
Lady Bell, who has made an exhaustive study of workingmen's homes in the manufacturing district around Middlesborough, says: "My conviction is, that under present conditions there will never be more than a certain proportion of women who can carry the immense burden allotted to the workingman's wife." Young women wholly untrained in hygiene, cookery, or household economics marry laboring men ------ man to earn a living wage is that it would arm her against the temptations of an immoral life. The white slave traffic thrives upon the ignorant, untrained girl. 
"Germany, Switzerland, and France are far ahead of England in technical schools for girls," says Lady McLaren; "English women cannot compete with French women in the higher branches of dressmaking, embroidery, flower-making, artistic handiwork, or cooking." Once equipped as a skilled worker, a woman becomes independent. She is able to keep herself before marriage. She can wait and select the man she prefers. She is able to return to her trade should her marriage prove unhappy. She is able to help the family should the husband have ill health. As a widow, she is able to take up again her skilled work and to support herself without becoming a burden to any one. This is all that economic independence means, and without economic independence every woman is handicapped in the struggle for existence. 
The Charter asks that the Government appoint a Commission of women and arm it with authority and money to formulate and carry out measures to check the trade in vice. Men alone have failed to find a remedy for the social evil. The aim, consciously or unconsciously, has been to make vice safe for men, and the methods of doing so have forced women in to the deepest degradation, and denied them all chance of escape. 
The Charter asks that the father of an illegitimate child be held responsible for any injury to mother or child arising from his neglect. Under the present law a father can be made to contribute five shillings a week to the support of an illegitimate child, provided a clear case can be made out against him, but the mother cannot claim maintenance for her self during the time she is unable to work. The illegitimate child is held by the law to be the child of no one. No right over it is given to the mother, nor may it inherit her property; nevertheless, the law holds that she is responsible for its maintenance and, should it die through her neglect or by her willful act, she must be indicated for manslaughter or murder. Domestic servants furnish the great majority of the cases of infanticide. Betrayed by the master or son of the house, they lose at once their characters, their situation, and their hope of future employment; at the same time, the sole responsibility of maintaining a second life is force upon them.
HER FATE AND HIS
If, driven to desperation, a girl destroys her child, the law requires that she be sentenced to death, but to the man who has ruined her life, the law metes out no condemnation. Not many years ago a bill passed the House of Commons providing that the miserable young mother who had made way with her illegitimate child might be imprisoned for life instead of suffering the death penalty, but the bill was thrown out by the Lords and the Commons did not press it. It is noteworthy that the Bishops voted solidly for the death penalty. They could not forget the Mosaic law required that a woman found guilty of adultery should be stoned to death-but they did forget, with singular unanimity, that the same stern law decreed that the man who shared in the 

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