[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR. "] SIR, - It was with
great interest that I read the very able article in last week's issue entitled " The Spoilt Child of the Law," but it was nevertheless with a feeling of some dis- appointment, owing to the fact that what is undoubtedly a prac- tical and important side of the question has either escaped the notice of the writer, or has been omitted from the article owing to the claims of space. The matter to which attention should be chiefly directed is not so much the injury which is caused to the large and presumably prosperous tradesmen dealing on the credit system with members of "the smart set," but rather the terrible suffering caused by the power reposed in the married woman of the poorer class to contract as agent for her husband and pledge his credit for necessaries.
The writer of your article is evidently a man of legal know- ledge, but one whose experience has not taken him into any of the crowded County Courts in manufacturing towns, where the evil mentioned above is shown in all its sordid reality. On every day when the Court is sitting a great part of the Registrar's time is taken up by debt collectors, usually of Semitic appearance, bringing with them batches of from ten to a hundred summonses against labouring men employed in the neighbouring works. These summonses are almost invariably against the workmen at the instance of shopkeepers engaged in the supply of household articles and clothing, for goods supplied to the wife for the use of the household.
While the men are at their work goods are hawked from house to house, and the women, tempted by the unscrupulous tradesman and by promises of easy payment, order indiscriminately, and with little thought of payment, any articles which meet with their approval, sometimes, it is true, necessary for the household, but more commonly purchased for the sole purpose of raising money at the nearest pawnshop. The husband never sees the goods, but, on his return from work, finds his house untidy, his meal unprepared, and his wife, who should have been attending to his wants, either absent from the house or under the influence of drink. It is not until the next Court day that he discovers the source from which the woman obtained the means of visiting the public-house.
The scene at the Court is not that depicted by your contributor, of the unprotected and unfortunate tradesman unable to obtain payment for goods supplied, but the very different one of the husband unable to defend the claim, and the tradesman, certain of obtaining his judgment, pressing home his case and exacting by his ready tool, the debt collector, his legal rights to the utter- most farthing. A husband has no means of relieving himself from future claims save by giving notice to the tradesman and to the world at large that he will no longer be responsible for his wife's debts, and a self-respecting man is usually unwilling to adopt this course, as he is exposed by it to the unmerited ridicule and contempt of his friends and neighbours.
From this picture it will be readily appreciated that the real injury is not that done to the tradesman in the West End, who makes up from one customer what he loses from another, and takes all risks with his eyes open and with the certainty of obtaining a wide advertisement in the Press if he institutes proceedings, but that done to the husband of the poorer classes, who is compelled to pay debts incurred by an unworthy wife.
The law, by giving the right to a woman to purchase goods at her husband's expense, and to pledge them for her own purposes, affords her every assistance in rendering the home uninhabitable ; and it is entirely owing to this that the husband is driven to the shelter of the public-house, or, only too often, to the prisoner's dock at the Police Court to answer a charge for wife-beating, where his defence of great provocation is usually unavailing.
The subject is one of such wide importance to the working man that I have ventured to trespass at some length on your valuable space in order to emphasise the results, which flow naturally from the present unsatisfactory state of the law on the subject of married women.
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