LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A LESSON FROM THE PENGE MURDER.
[TO TIM EDITOR OF THE “SPROTATOR.1
SIR,—In commenting on the horrible story of poor Harriet Staunton, the Times of the 27th ult. made the following note-
worthy observation :—
"She was married in spite of the efforts of the mother to defend her by placing her under the protection of the Court of Chancery, and by the marriage the husband acquired the right not only to receive the income of Harriet Staunton's money, but to apply the principal as he might think fit. Did our law resemble that of many countries which have followed the Civil Law, whatever the motives of this marriage might have been, a certain circumspection in conduct towards the wife would have boon necessary, if any advantage was to be derived from her pro- perty after her death. The husband might have extorted the enjoy- ment of her money during her lifetime by violence or terror, but after her death it would have been distributed among her kindred, unless she had made a will in favour of her husband, and such a will in the cir- cumstances would have been liable to a formal legal ordeal, which pro- bably people like the Stauntons would hesitate to face. But under the present law of personal property, there was no such obstacle to the appropriation of the unhappy woman's money. The husband became absolute possessor of Harriet Staunton's money, and on the supposition that the possession of this money was the one object of the marriage, she remained merely an odious incumbrance."
Thu it appears that it is the exceptional privilege of an Eng- lishwoman—that "favourite of our law," as Blackstone calls her —to remain "merely an odious incumbrance " to any man who has married her (as probably some ten or twenty per cent, of men marry their wives), for the sake of obtaining her money ; and this is admitted by the great opponent of all the rights of women as just a curious little coincidence, woratthapaaao how many tionas a point of comparative national legigiom hun- dreds of miserable women has it not been a matter literally of life and death ? Few, indeed, it is to be hoped and believed, have been the husbands who, like Louis Staunton, have resolvedly and of malice aforethought actually starved their Wives; or like De Tourville, have thrown them down a precipice ; but in how many cases have they not let them die,—that is, forborne to pro- vide the change of diet or of scene, the medical care, the house- hold peace, whereon depended the chance of baffling disease and weakness, or the nervous maladies of which an unhappy marriage is so often the fertile source?
In the class to which Harriet Staunton belonged some protec- tion for the wife's interests is commonly obtained by means of settlements, or of relatives in a position to resent any gross mis- usage. But if a woman inheriting some thousands of pounds ia liable to die of hunger under her husband's jailorship, what shall we hope for the poor souls of humbler condition, who have oftem no surviving parents, and for whom trustees of marriage settle- ments, not to speak of wardships in Chancery, are things un- dreamed of ? Let us take the commonest of cases, that of a respectable female servant, who after years of industry and self- denial allows herself to indulge the dream of a fireside of her own, and listens to the suit of some scamp of a fellow-ser- vant, anxious to finger the hoarded earnings of her life. The man is younger than the woman, and never really loved her at all ; and when he has once got possession of her money, has every motive to wish she were dead, and not a single reason to desire to keep alive his "odious incumbrance," It is, vain to say the woman was a fool and the man a scoundrel, and that no law can protect a fool from a scoundrel. The fact (as, admitted by the Times) is that the Code Napoleon and other legal systems do afford a certain protection to every wife,—that is to- say, they partially remove the temptation of bad husbands to put. them out of the way. Does not this afford a very strong argument in favour of further developments of the Married Women's Pro- perty Act, and of a complete change in the principle of English, law, whereby a woman's inheritance, when unprotected by a costly settlement, is most simply and effectually made over to- her husband, no correspondingly simple or effectual security for the bare necessaries of life being provided for her in return, bat her very life ever afterwards being converted into "merely an
odious incumbrance " am, Sir, &c., F.
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