A SOCIAL EVIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XII, Issue 4126, 3 February 1875, Page 3

A SOCIAL EVIL.

Tin-: Melbourne 'J'<-h'tim/ih thus discourses : — Husbands., like all other people, live and learn, and are frequently afforded opportunities of ascertaining the terms upon which they can commit various domestic outrages. Men who fail to provide for tlieir families, or allow their sons to roit to prison, and their daughters to run with premature speed to the streets, have little or nothing to fear. When one of the class is brought before a police court he may receive a caution from a magistrate with instructions to go home and take better care of his children, or it may be that lie will be relieved of all further immediate trouble by having the youngsters sent to the Industrial School with an order to pay so much per week, the amount of which he need never pay. Men who desert their wives have also pretty favourable arrangements made on tlieir behalf ; but those who remain at home and indulge in the family business of wifebeating are, of all domestic vill.-.ins, the most fortunate. They, for all brutr.l purposes, possess an a'most complete immunity, the law—or, at any rate, the magistrates— practically saying to them, " Hammer lu.r bones ovi-r tlie stonesStir's only , womiin whoin nobody owns." The most brutal outrages are committed, the only consequence being that the man is bound over in a small penalty to keep the peace, and the result of this culpable indifference respecting the rights of woman is being fully developed. It prevailed in Kngland for years, and the last few mails have brought news of numerous wives being kicked to death, while the list of wife-beating has been a disgrace to the country. In Victoria tho same indifference or injustice has been the order of the courts, and the like consequences arc following. Tin's week has furnished a signal instance of the monstrous leniency with which magistrates regard the most cowardly of crimes. A man at Prahran seriously assaulted his wife with a champagne bottle, beating her about the bead with it until the was covered with blood. The woman bad to be removed to the hospital, and it is stated that she would have bled to death bui for the. interference of a neighbour, who bound uplicr wounds. The husband is a duly qualitied medical mail, and he stood by while the victim of his brutality lay bleeding to death, aud actually joked about the good it would do her to get rid of a little blood. He was perfectly sober, and gave tlie police considerable trouble to take him to the lockup. Alter some days his wife recovered siltliciently to give evidence, and after hearing the case the magistrate sentenced the prisoner to fourteen days' imprisonment. In this instance the usual excuse was not applicable. It is customary to explain away the non-imprisonment or brief incarceration of wife-beaters on the ground that their families must sutler if they are prevented from attending t.) their usual work. In the l'rahran case, however, the. woman was the wife of a man worth .C'JO, 000, besides his practice as a doctor, so that there was no fear of her being inconvenienced had her brute of a husband been sent to gaol for as many months as he was days. Such a punishment would, however, have been too marked an intcrfecnee with the rights of man, one of the most conspicious of them in Victoria being the privilege to abuse wives with almost complete impunity.