WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
roy and the Governor-General of India for an Act deferring the marriage of girls until the age of fourteen. Thirteen terrible instances of physical injury inflicted upon children, through premature union, were set down in the petition. In one case a child of seven died three days after the marriage ceremony.
In ancient times in India, it was decreed that husbands who cohabited with wives under ten years of age, with or without their consent, should be guilty of rape, and sentenced to life-long banishment, or imprisonment for ten years.[1] The age of consummation was raised, some years ago, to twelve.
Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D., in an "Address to the Hindoos of Bombay on the Subject of Child-marriage," said that Indian girls are not physically adapted for maternity even when they have reached puberty. "A Hindoo girl of fifteen is about the equal of an English girl of eleven, instead of the reverse."
Premature marriage of girl-children is not restricted to India. It was practised in England in the time of Elizabeth; for an Act of her reign permitted legal wedlock with a child of ten. The marriageable age among the Esquimaux and other primitive peoples is frequently as early as in India.
- ↑ "A Practical View of the Age of Consent,"
Pamphlet, Calcutta, 1891.
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