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destroy his business connection. She can call at his club and secure his expulsion. If he be a working man she can interview his employer and secure his prompt dismissal. She can render him a laughing-stock to all his acquaintances, and at the same time achieve his financial ruin. The law and its administrators stand idly by. No remedy for the helpless male. The "poor woman" (they are always that) must have been ill-used; there is no such thing as savage vindictiveness and recklessness in the female.
(e) Impunity for Violence and Assault.
If a man under any provocation, no matter how galling—insolence or violence—strikes a woman, he is sent to hard labour, divorced, and his property confiscated, or his earnings hypothecated—and all this through the prompt instrumentality of the police-court. A woman may assault, stab, set fire to her husband, and he has no remedy, except to summon her to the police-court, where, if she be fined, he is compelled to pay the fine, and as likely as not is laughed at. If her crime be revoltingly atrocious, she is perhaps sent to prison—for one-twentieth part of the time awarded to a male offender for a like offence. On her being released, her husband, unless he be a rich man, is bound to take her back, and, rich or poor, support her. The prompt and inexpensive police-court divorce is not for him.
A humane police magistrate actually had to stoop to make terms with a cruel and murderous criminal. A wife strikes a felon blow at her husband, renders him insensible, and he has to be removed to the hospital. His face is badly scarred, six stitches having to be put into the wounds. The magistrate, wishing to prevent murder, binds her over to come up for judgment, if called upon, on condition that she kindly consents to sign a separation deed, permitting her unfortunate hus-
