The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woman, Church and State, by Matilda Joslyn Gage.

[72] The latest attempt for licensing vice in the United States was made in New Orleans, 1892, in the form of an ordinance proposing to grant to Dr. Wm. Harnon the privilege of levying an inspection tax upon those known as “Public Women” of a.50 a week for fifteen years.

The “Louisiana Review” said of it:

“A more revolting proposition than this has never come under our notice, and we are amazed that the health committee failed to detect its character, however artfully it may have been screened by the pretext that it was intended to lessen the harm of the social evil.”

The “New Delta,” in its issue of August 31, said: “The queer and ill-favored monopoly which the ordinance for the regulation of houses of bad repute sought to establish has not been successful on the first effort. It goes back to a committee. Let us hope that it will remain buried there forever, and decent people be saved the infliction of a public discussion of the miserable scheme. Such systems of ‘regulation’ would disgrace the devil, and the proposition for the city to share in the plunder of these poor wretches would shame a Piute village.”

The Woman’s Journal, September 19, said:

“It is well that this measure has failed on the first attempt; but to refer a matter to a committee is not necessarily to kill it, and its fate in the committee should be closely watched. The laws establishing the state regulation of vice in England were smuggled through Parliament about 1 o’clock in the morning, when half the members were absent or asleep; but it took seventeen years of painful and distasteful agitation to repeal them. Prevention of bad legislation is better than cure.”

This attempt was finally defeated through the energetic opposition and work of Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon.

[73] The reporter, while the committee was still in session, went to a procuress and ordered a pretty girl, 14 years of age, certified by a physician to be good, to be delivered to his order as “agent for gentlemen of 60.” The madame accepted the order, and in a short time produced the girl certified. The reporter investigated the child’s history, and ascertained that her father was dead and her mother was a poor working woman. The girl was dressed in an old black frock. Having completed the purchase of the girl, the reporter hastened to arrange for her delivery anywhere and to any person designated by the committee.

[74] A committee composed of Cardinal Manning, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London and two laymen, examined the evidence respecting criminal vice in London, becoming satisfied that the statements made by the “Pall Mall Gazette” were substantially true.

[75] The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon preached a powerful sermon upon the patrician iniquity of London, comparing it to the worst sins of ancient nations, one sure, sooner or later, to bring destruction upon both individual and nation.

[76] When you see a girl on the street you can never say without inquiry whether she is one of the most-to-be-condemned or the most-to-be-pitied of her sex. Many of them find themselves where they are because of a too trusting disposition; others are as much the innocent victims of crime as if they had been stabbed or maimed by the dagger of the assassin.... These women constituted a large standing army, whose numbers no one can calculate. Gen. Booth.—Darkest England, 51-56.

[77] Children as they go to and from school are waited for and watched until the time has come for running them down.—Report of the Secret Commission.

[78] It seemed a strange inverted world, that in which I lived those terrible weeks, the world of the streets and brothel. It was the same, and yet not the same as the world of business and the world of politics. I heard of much the same people in the house of ill-fame as those of whom you hear in caucuses, in law courts and on ’change; but all were judged by a different standard, and their relative importance was altogether changed. Mr. Stead.—“Pall Mall Gazette.”

[79] Report of Secret Commission.

[80] An immense number of public women congregated at Nice during the time of its Historic Council, which settled the genuineness of the books of the Bible.

[81] So fast has this class of pecuniarily independent single women increased within the past two and a half decades, women who prefer a single life with its personal independence, to a married life with its legal dependence and restrictions, as to call from the “London Times” the designation of “Third Sex.”

[82] The statistics of prostitution show that the great proportion of those who have fallen into it have been impelled by the most extreme poverty, in many instances verging upon starvation.—Hist. European Morals, 2, 203.

[83] Belgium and Holland entered into an agreement a few years since for its suppression.

[84] When Hon. Henry Blair presented a petition, asking for the better protection of girls, he said: “Our civilization seems to have developed an almost unknown phase of crime in the annals of the race, and today the traffic in girls and young women in this country, especially in our large cities, has come to be more disgraceful and worse than ever was that in the girls of Circassia.”

This Christianity of ours has much to answer for.—Woman’s Tribune.

[85] It was at one time proposed to arrest all women out alone in the city of Syracuse, N.Y., after 9 o’clock in the evening. Had the ordinance been enacted, a lady of mature years and position was prepared to test its legality.

[86] Eighteen women were arrested on Monday night in the fifteenth and twenty-ninth police precincts, and after being held in confinement over night, were taken before Justice Duffy at the Jefferson Market Police Court Tuesday morning.

“What were these women doing?” asked the justice.

“Nothing,” replied the officer.

“Then why did you arrest them?”

“We have to do it, sir. It is the order of the police superintendent when we find them loitering on the streets.”—New York “Sunday Sun,” June 28, 1885.

[87] Mr. Breen said the horrors of the camps into which these girls are inveigled cannot be adequately described. There is no escape for these poor creatures. In one case a girl escaped after being shot in the leg, and took refuge in a swamp. Dogs were started on her trail, and she was hunted down and taken back to her den. In another case a girl escaped while a dance was going on at the shanty into which she had been lured. After several days and nights of privation she made her way to an island near the shore in Lake Michigan, where a man named Stanley lived. But the dogs and human bloodhounds trailed her, Stanley was overcome, and the girl was taken back. The law now provides for imprisonment of only one year in case of conviction of any connection with this traffic, and it is proposed to amend it.—Telegraphic Report.

[88] Tales of a horrible character reach us from Michigan and other northern lumber districts of the manner in which girls are enticed to these places on the promise of high wages, and then subjected to brutal outrages past description. Some three hundred of these dens are located. These girls are sold by the keepers, passing from one den to another, from one degree of hellish brutality to another (we beg pardon of all brutes), all escape guarded against by ferocious bloodhounds. The maximum of life is two months.—“Union Labor Journal.”

[89] Tony Harden used to keep dives in Norway and Quinnesic, and it is said of him that after paying a constable a2 to bring a girl back who had tried to escape, he beat her with a revolver until he was tired, and was about to turn a bull-dog loose at her, when a woodsman appeared and stopped him. The next spring Harden was elected justice of the peace.—“Woman’s Standard.”

[90] The Rev. Mr. Kerr, of the Protestant Church, Colon, recently discovered three young girls brought to the Isthmus for improper purposes. He took the children away, and with the assistance of others returned them to their parents in Jamaica.

[91] Quebec, April 11.—Wholesale trading in young and innocent girls for purposes of prostitution has come to the notice of the authorities. Disreputable houses in Chicago, New York, Boston and other cities in the United States have agents here, who ingratiate themselves with young women and induce them to go to the states, where they are drawn into a life of infamy. The trade has been carried on to an alarming extent, sometimes fifteen girls being shipped in a week. The prices paid to agents depend on the looks of the girls and vary from $20 to $200. It is stated that over fifty girls have been sent to one Chicago house within a year.—“Daily Press.”

[92] The startling revelations within the past few days as to the traffic at Ottawa in young girls of from 12 to 14, in which a number of prominent citizens as well as several leading politicians are implicated, have caused the greatest indignation. Tuesday night a meeting was held under the auspices of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with a view to devising some means by which the great stain on the capital’s good name might be removed. It was decided that the matter must become the subject of special legislation at the next session of Parliament, before the guilty scoundrels can be punished. Opposition is expected from the members of Parliament who are implicated in the outrages.—“Daily Press.”

[93] “Topeka Leader.”

[94] In Troy, N.Y., in the fall of 1891, discovery was made of an organized plan to ravish little girls. It numbered in its ranks married men, members of the police force, and men well known in business and church circles. With this discovery came the statement from other cities that like offenders were common.—“The Daily Press.”

[95] Persistent efforts have been made by women to stop these great wrongs, but having no power in legislation, her prayers and petitions have met with but scant success.

[96] Married at Thirteen Years.—Maud Pearl Johnson, a thirteen-year-old girl of Fulton, who was married to Franklin Foster of that place on Monday, has been placed in the State Industrial School in Rochester under sentence by Police Justice Spencer of Fulton. Foster is a widower with three children. The minister at Fairdale who performed the ceremony is said to have been fined $3 for cruelty to children. The poor authorities arrested the young wife for vagrancy.

[97] Africa, Australia, India, Canada, the United States among the number.

[98] Who gave seventeen years of her life to work for the overthrow of government legislation of vice in England.

[99]—1. To treat all women with respect, and endeavor to protect them from wrong and degradation.

2. To endeavor to put down all indecent language and coarse jests.

3. To maintain the law of purity as equally binding upon men and women.

4. To endeavor to spread these principles among my companions, and try to help my younger brothers.

5. To use every possible means to fulfill the command: “Keep Thyself Pure.”

[100] The women claimed the right to baptize their own sex. But the bishops and presbyters did not care to be released from the pleasant duty of baptizing the female converts. Waite.—Hist. of Christian Religion to A.D. 200, p. 23.

The Constitution of the Church of Alexandria, which is thought to have been established about the year 200, required the applicant for baptism to be divested of clothing, and after the ordinance had been administered, to be anointed with oil.—Ibid, p. 384-5.

The converts were first exorcised of the evil spirits that were supposed to inhabit them; then, after undressing and being baptized, they were anointed with oil.—Bunsen’s Christianity of Mankind, Vol. VII, p. 386-393; 3d Vol. Analecta.

Women were baptized quite naked in the presence of these men.—Philosophical Dictionary.

Some learned men have enacted that in primitive churches the persons to be baptized, of whatever age or sex, should be quite naked. Pike.—History of Crime in England. See Joseph Vicecomes.—De Ritibus Baptismi. Varrius.—Thesibus de Baptisme.

[101] Undisguised sensuality reached a point we can scarcely conceive. Women were sometimes brought naked upon the stage. By a curious association of ideas the theater was still intimately connected with religious observance. Rationalism in Europe, 2-288.

[102] Catharine, the first wife of Peter the Great, was received into the Greek Church by a rite nearly approaching the primitive customs of the Christian Church. New converts to that church are plunged three times naked in a river or into a large tub of cold water. Whatever is the conditions, age or sex of the convert, this indecent ceremony is never dispensed with. The effrontery of a pope (priests of the Greek Church are thus called), sets at defiance all the reasons which decency and modesty never cease to use against the absurdity and impudence of this shameful ceremony. Count Segur.—Woman’s Condition and Influence in Society.

[1] Black was hated as the colors of the devil. In the same manner red was hated in Egypt as the color of Typhon.

[2] At what date then did the witch appear? In the age of despair, of that deep despair which the guilt of the church engendered. Unfalteringly I say, the witch is a crime of their own making.—Michelet.

[3] “It is not a little remarkable, though perfectly natural, that the introduction of the cat gave a new impulse to tales and fears of ghosts and enchantments. The sly, creeping, nocturnal grimalkin took rank at once with owls and bats, and soon surpassed them both as an exponent of all that is weird and supernatural. Entirely new conceptions of witchcraft were gained for the world when the black cat appeared upon the scene with her swollen tail, glistening eyes and unearthy yell.”—Ex.

[4] Steevens says it was permitted to a witch to take on a cattes body nine times.—Brand, 3, 89-90.

[5] Mr. E. F. Spicer, a taxidermist of Birmingham, whose great specialty is the artistic preparation of kittens for sale, will not purchase black ones, as he finds the superstition against black cats interferes with their sale.—“Pall Mall Gazette,” Nov. 13, 1886. But the United States, less superstitious, has recently witnessed the formation of a “Consolidated Cat Company” upon Puget Sound for the special propagation of black cats to be raised for their fur.

[6] City of God, Lib. XVIII. Charles F. Lummis, in a recent work, Some Strange Corners of Our Country, the Wonderland of the Southwest, refers to the power of the shamans to turn themselves at will into any animal shape, as a wolf, bear or dog.

[7] Italian women usually became cats. The Witch Hammer mentioned a belief in Lycanthropy and Metamorphosis. It gave the story of a countryman who was assaulted by three cats. He wounded them, after which three infamous witches were found wounded and bleeding.

[8] For a full account of this madness, and other forms that sometimes attacked whole communities during the middle Christian ages, see “Hecker.—Epidemics of the Middle Ages.”

[9] The conventicle of witches was said to be held on Mt. Atlas, “to which they rode upon a goat, a night crow, or an enchanted staff, or bestriding a broom staff. Sundry speeches belonged to these witches, the words whereof were neither Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, nor indeed deriving their Etymology from any known language.”

[10] St. Gregory of Nyassa, a canonized saint, the only theologian to whom the church (except St. John) has ever allowed the title of “The Divine,” was a member of that council, aiding in the preparation of the Nicene Creed. It is a significant fact that a great number of public women, “an immense number,” congregated at Nice during the sessions of this council.

[11] In Guernsey a mother and her two daughters were brought to the stake; one of the latter, a married woman with child, was delivered in the midst of her torments, and the infant, just rescued, was tossed back into the flames by a priest with the cry, “One heretic the less.”

[12] “Old writers declared that women have been more addicted to these devilish arts than men, was manifest by ‘many grave authors,’ among whom Diodorus, Sindas, Pliny and St. Augustine were mentioned. Quintillian declared theft more prevalent among men, but witchcraft especially a sin of women.”

[13] Lea.—Superstition and Force.

[14] Certain forms of ordeal, such as the ordinary ones of fire and water, seem to have owed their origin to the trials passed by the candidate for admission into the ancient mysteries, as Lea has also conjectured. During the mysteries of Isis, the candidate was compelled to descend into dark dungeons of unknown depth, to cross bars of red-hot iron, to plunge into a rapid stream at seeming hazard of life, to hang suspended in mid-air while the entrance into other mysteries confronted the candidate with howling wild beasts and frightful serpents. All who passed the ancient ordeals in safety, were regarded as holy and acceptable to the Deity, but not so under Christian ordeal, its intention being conviction of the accused. Those who proved their innocence by carrying red-hot iron uninjured for three paces and the court was thus forced to acquit, or who passed through other forms of torture without confession were still regarded with suspicion as having been aided by Satan, and the sparing of their lives was to the scandal of the faithful.

[15] Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all human ill. She should be ashamed at the very thought she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of the demon.—Hist. European Morals, Vol. 2, p. 358.

[16] Witchcraft was supposed to have power of subverting religion.—Montesquieu.

[17] The question why the immense majority of those who were accused should be women, early attracted attention; it was answered by the inherent wickedness of the sex, which had its influence in pre-disposing men to believe in witches, and also in producing the extreme callousness with which the sufferings of the victims were contemplated.—Rationalism in Europe 1, 88.

[18] 18 mo. An unusually small size for that period.

[19] (Witch Hammer.)

[20] The Court of Rome was fully apprized that power cannot be maintained without property, and thereupon its attention began very early to be riveted upon every method that promised pecuniary advantage. All the wealth of Christendom was gradually drawn by a thousand channels into the coffers of the Holy See. Blackstone.—Commentaries 4, 106. “The church forfeited the wizard’s property to the judge and the prosecutor. Wherever the church law was enforced, the trials for witchcraft waxed numerous and brought much wealth to the clergy. Wherever the lay tribunal claimed the management of those trials, they grew scarce and disappeared.”

[21] Burning Place of the Cross.

[22] A MS. upholding the burning of witches as heretics, written in 1450 by the Dominican Brother Hieronymes Visconti, of Milan, is among the treasures of the White Library, recently presented to Cornell University.

[23] It shall not be amiss to insert among these what I have heard concerning a witch of Scotland: One of that countrie (as by report there are too many) being for no goodness of the judges of Assize, arrayed, convicted and condemned to be burnt, and the next day, according to her judgment, brought and tied to the stake, the reeds and fagots placed around about her, and the executioner ready to give fire (for by no persuasion of her ghostly fathers, nor importunities of the sheriff, she could be wrought to confess anything) she now at the last cast to take her farewell of the world, casting her eye at one side upon her only sonne, and calls to him, desiring him verie earnestly as his last dutie to her to bring her any water, or the least quantity of licuor (be it never so small), to comfort her, for she was so extremely athirst, at which he, shaking his head, said nothing; she still importuned him in these words: “Oh, my deere sonne help me to any drinke, be it never so little, for I am most extremely drie, oh drie, drie:” to which the young fellow answered, “by no means, deere mother will I do you that wrong; for the drier you are (no doubt) you will burne the better.” Heywoode—History of Women, Lib. 9, p. 406.

[24] Lenormant.—Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, 385.

[25] Institutes of Scotland.

[26] At Bamburg, Germany, an original record of twenty-nine burnings in nineteen months, 162 persons in all, mentions the infant daughter of Dr. Schutz as a victim of the twenty-eighth burning. Hauber.—Bibliotheca Magica.

[27] In those terrible trials presided over by Pierre de Lancre, it was asserted that hundreds of girls and boys flocked to the indescribable Sabbats of Labourd. The Venetians’ record the story of a little girl of nine years who raised a great tempest, and who like her mother was a witch. Signor Bernoni.—Folk Lore.

[28] Some very strange stories of such power at the present time have become known to the author, one from the lips of a literary gentleman in New York City, this man of undoubted veracity declaring that he had seen his own father extend his hand under a cloudless sky and produce rain. A physician of prominence in a western city asserts that a most destructive cyclone, known to the Signal Service Bureau as “The Great Cyclone,” was brought about by means of magical formulae, made use of by a school girl in a spirit of ignorant bravado.

[29] These and similar powers known as magical, are given as pertaining to the Pueblo Indians, by Charles F. Lummis, in Some Strange Corners of Our Country, pub. 1892. A friend of the author witnessed rain thus produced by a very aged Iowa Indian a few years since.

[30] A Hindoo Scripture whose name signifies knowledge.—Max Muller.

[31] Isis Unveiled, I, 354.

[32] Of which the tricks of Halloween may be a memento.

[33] Anacalypsis, Vol. I. p. 35.

[34] Bacchus was not originally the god of wine, but signified books. Instruction of old, when learning was a secret science, was given by means of leaves. “Bacchus Sabiesa” really signified “book wise” or learned, and the midsummer day festival was celebrated in honor of learning. In the Anacalypsis Higgins says: “From Celland I learn that in Celtic, Sab means wise, whence Saba and Sabasius, no doubt wise in the stars. From this comes the Sabbath day, or day dedicated to wisdom, and the Sabbat, a species of French masonry, an account of which may be seen in Dulare’s History of Paris. Sunday was the day of instruction of the Druids, whence it was called Sabs.—Ibid, I. 716.

[35] From the preachment of the Sabs, or Sages, or wise Segent Sarcedos.—Ibid, I, 716.

[36] The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the witch. The emperors, kings, popes and richer barons had indeed the doctors of Salermo, then Moors and Jews, but the bulk of the people in every state; the world, it might as well be called, consulted none but the Sages or wise women. Michelet—La Sorciere.

[37] I make no doubt that his (Paracelsus) admirable and masterly work on the Diseases of Women, the first written on this theme, so large, so deep, so tender, came forth from his special experience of those women to whom others went for aid, the witches, who acted as midwives, for never in those days was a male physician admitted to the women.—Ibid.

[38] Within the past fifty years the death rate in childbirth was forty in a thousand, an enormous mortality, and although the advances in medical knowledge have somewhat lessened the rate, more women still lose their lives during childbirth than soldiers in battle.

[39] In childbirth a motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself into a sleep, and soothing the infant’s passage, after the manner of modern chloroform, into the world.—Michelet.

[40] Poruchet Solenases.

[41] Alexander.—History of Women.

[42] You will hardly believe it, but I saw a real witch’s skull, the other evening, at a supper party I had the pleasure of attending. It was at the house of Dr. Dow, a medical gentleman of culture and great skill in his profession here. You will admit that a skull is not a pleasant thing to exhibit in a parlor, and some of the ladies did not care about seeing it; but the majority did, and you know one cannot see a witch’s skull every day. So, after a little hesitation and persuasion on the part of the doctor, he produced the uncanny thing and gave us its history, or rather that of the witch. She lived at Terryburn, a little place near here. One day it came to the ears of the kirk session of the parish that she had had several interviews with his Satanic Majesty. Strange enough, when the woman was brought before that body—which seems to have been all-powerful in the several parishes in those days—and accused of it, she at once admitted the charge to be true. The poor soul, who could have been nothing else than an idiot, as the doctor pointed out from the very low forehead and small brain cavity, was sentenced to be prevented from going to sleep; or in other words, tortured to death, and the desired end was attained in about five days, her body being buried below high-water mark.

Her name was Lilias Adie, and there is no doubt that she was only a harmless imbecile. The skull, and also a piece of the coffin, were presented to the doctor by a friend who had read in the kirk session records an account of the trial, and went to the spot stated as being the place of burial. The remains were found by him exactly as indicated, although there was nothing to mark their resting place. One would have thought that after the lapse of so many years it would be exceedingly difficult to find them, but you know things do not undergo such radical changes in this country as they do in America.—From a traveler’s letter in the “Syracuse Journal,” August 22, 1881.

Almost indistinguished from the belief in witchcraft was the belief that persons subject to epilepsy, mania or any form of mental weakness, were possessed of a devil who could be expelled by certain religious ceremonies. Pike.—History of Crime in England, Vol. pp. 7-8.

[43] The mysteries of the human conscience and of human motives are well nigh inscrutable, and it may be shocking to assert that these customs of unmitigated wrong are indirectly traceable to that religion of which the two great commandments were that man should love his neighbor as himself. Lea.—Superstition and Force, 53.

[44] Fox’s Book of Martyrs, gives account of persons brought into court upon litters six months after having been subjected to the rack.

[45] In this case both men and women says Johannus Mergerus, author of a History of Flanders.

[46] Adrianus Ferrens.

[47] St. Bernard exorcised a demon Incubus, who for six years maintained commerce with a woman, who could not get rid of him. Lea.—Studies in Church History.

[48] It was observed they (devils) had a peculiar attachment to women with beautiful hair, and it was an old Catholic belief that St. Paul alluded to this in that somewhat obscure passage in which he exhorts women to cover their heads because of the angels.—Sprangler.

[49] The attention of scientific men and governments has recently been directed to what are now called “The Accursed Sciences,” under whose action certain crimes have been committed from “suggestion,” the hand which executed being only that of an irresponsible automaton, whose memory preserves no traces of it. The French Academy has just been debating the question—how far a hypnotized subject from a mere victim can become a regular tool of crime.—Lucifer, October 1887.

“Merck’s Bulletin,” New York medical journal, in an editorial entitled Modern Witchcraft, December, 1892, relates some astonishing experiments recently made at the Hôpital de la Charité, Paris, in which the power to “exteriorize sensibility” has been discovered, reproducible at will; suggestion through means of simulated pinching producing suffering; photographs sensitive to their originals even having been produced. Thus modern science stamps with truthfulness the power asserted as pertaining to black magicians, of causing suffering or death through means of a waxen image of a person. “The Accursed Sciences,” although brought to the bar of modern investigating knowledge, seem not yet to have yielded the secrets of the law under which they are rendered possible.

[50] In 1609 six hundred sorcerers were convicted in the Province of Bordeaux, France, most of whom were burned.—Dr. Priestly. Within the last year fourteen women have been tried in France for sorcery.

[51] The supreme end of magic is to conjure the spirits. The highest and most inscrutable of all the powers dwells in the divine and mysterious name, “The Supreme Name,” with which Hea alone is acquainted. Before this name everything bows in heaven and earth, and in hades, and it alone can conquer the Maskim and stop their ravages. The great name remained the secret of Hea; if any man succeeded in divining it, that alone would invest him with a power superior to the gods.—Chaldean Magic and Sorcery.