THE WOMEN'S CHARTER.
[To THE EDITOR. OP TEE " SPECTATOR.") Si/Z.—Your criticism in last week's Spectator of Lady McLaren's "Women's Charter" fills me with thankfulness. I consider the proposal to legalise murder perfectly appalling; but in writing to you I do not want only to thank you for vindicating the rights of hapless infants to have their lives protected, but to comment on another aspect of Lady lfeLaren's pamphlet. She says in the passage quoted by you that a girl is hounded down if she has an illegitimate child, and that everybody's hand is against her. Now this is so very contrary to fact that I must protest against it. The truth is that in the big villages the sin of uncbastity is regarded as no sin at all. It is a question of money. If the man can be made to pay, so much the better; but as to righteous indigna- tion at the fact of the seduction, it does not exist. I know what I am talking about, haying had girls' clubs under my own control for the past thirty-fire years, and nothing Ilea shocked me more than the utter weakening of a regard for personal chastity. I assure you I know for a fact that the temptation to sin comes as much (if not more) from the girl as the man. I know of a factory where young men work where they are waylaid and pestered beyond endurance by the girls of the village on their way to and from work. I know that the rising generation of girls in villages are mostly expecting to be mothers before they are married, and the only anxiety is to be secure of a man to keep the mother and infant by marriage, and not a feeling of degradation at their condition. This sounds a very strong indictment, but it is true. One has a feeling in reading Lady McLaren's state- ments that she is completely out of touch with the real question at issue, and writes sentimental vapourings from the cosy comfort of an armchair. Of course there are good girls and good parents, and now and again a girl suffers grievously for her fault, but that is not the rule. The rule is that the girls are quite as ready as the men to fall into temptation, and yield to it with no thought of the future and no care. I write of villages in the Midlands and of what I know to be the truth, and there is mostly no conscience as to wrongdoing, but only an anxiety as to how money is to be secured. If they could count upon a law legalising murder of the child of their sin, it is appalling to think what would happen, as there would be no need for either restraint or fear. And the State is to be called upon to support in prison these unnatural monsters who outrage the name of mother ! It seems almost a waste of time to discuss such an abominable state of things.
Previous page
