Such husbands and such wives exist by the thousand. Stand outside our public-houses and take stock. You see a number of men, young and of middle age, loafing about, propping up the outside walls, waiting to be treated. Invariably these have wretched drudges of wives, whose lives and homes cannot be described. Hundreds of such fellows find their way into our courts. In the cells I see and speak to them, and am frequently asked to go to the places where their wives are at work, and get them to raise or borrow enough money to pay their fines. I have some comfort in thinking that I have never helped to shorten by one hour the imprisonment these fellows so richly deserve. This wife-beating among a certain class is so common that I have found plenty of wives who take it as a perfect matter of course, and some do not mind very much unless they are seriously damaged. But there are others with whom it is far different; and this leads me to speak of another class among whom I have found agony and anxiety, suffering and hopelessness, that cannot be imagined.
Their homes are clean, nay, often refined, and comfortable; the women do not go out to work, and, unless absolutely in fear of their lives, they do not charge their husbands. But those husbands get charged for other offences, and I have made the acquaintance of numbers whose homes I have visited, and have found the lowest hell of misery, fear, and despair. I now refer to men who have to live by their brains and not by their muscles, but about whose brain there is something wrong--but what, no living man can tell. They can do severe mental work at great pressure; they are valuable servants, and keep their positions for years; but let them have one dose of alcohol, and their brain is completely unhinged; they become transformed into ‘wolf or tiger, hog or bearded goat,’ and all the devilish passions that can inhabit man are roused into active fury. Smash goes the furniture, sewing-machines and everything; away go the little ones to hide themselves. Woe be to the wife if she interferes! and, if she does not, horrible language, filthy accusations, and murderous threats are heard for hours. I have gone into many houses of this description, and have had to pick my way through the ruins of the home. I have seen the wives--educated women--crouching in a corner, and little ones have crept from their hiding-places and sought shelter behind me. I have stood in front of these men, and have been horribly afraid for my own safety, for with a poker or hatchet in his hand, a man of this kind needs wary dealing. I know these men are mad, but I know that no doctor will certify them as such. I know their madness takes one form--jealousy of the innocent wife. So again and again, when I have been called into such homes, have I had to play the hypocrite and humour his delusion; to have done otherwise would have been madness.