The Law and the Poor Part 10

That is one of the short and simple tales from the annals of imprisonment for debt.

What match are confiding folk like these for the lying scallywags who tout their inferior wares round the streets? And instead of our law remembering that we pray daily to be delivered from temptation, and playing the part of a father of the fatherless and a friend of the widows, it keeps alive section 5 of the Debtors Act, 1869, in the interests of about as low a cla.s.s of knaves as ever disgraced the name of English trade.

I know very well that there are many good honest folk who approve of imprisonment for debt and have fears about its abolition. These should remember that in France and Germany and a great part of America there is no such thing, and yet trade does not suffer and the working cla.s.ses do not starve. I should quite agree that if a man defrauds a tradesman by lying promises or cheating he should be punished, but imprisonment should be for fraud, not, as it is now, for poverty. As I have already pointed out, in America no honest man is likely to get into prison merely for the wickedness of owing money. We cannot say that is true here. In Germany the working man lives on a cash basis. Credit is not largely given, as there is no power of imprisonment for debt.

England is the last civilised country whose law encourages the poor to live on credit, yet nothing is more true than this, that once start living on credit and you cannot get out of it. It is a downward path leading to the Slough of Despond. But until the law is amended we must be content to look on and see the poor in the cages of prison whilst those that set the traps and catch them wax fat and shine.

And as soon as a boy or a girl begins to earn wages the Evil One, in the shape of some kind of tally-man, is at his or her elbow with a watch, or a ring, or a family Bible, or a musical instrument, or a shoddy sewing machine, the possession of which can be gloriously enjoyed on payment of the first instalment. I do not say that boys and girls must not buy their experience of the world and pay for it, but the law need not a.s.sist the knave in making it more expensive than is necessary. I have known several cases of young servants leaving good places and running off in terror because they have been served with a blue paper, "frightener" with a lot of law jargon about imprisonment upon it, threatening them with dire penalties because an instalment was due on a gold ring. More might certainly be done to prevent back-door trading, and there is no more reason why area touts should be allowed to infest the streets than the lower cla.s.s of bookmakers. Well-to-do people have very little idea of the number of firms that employ travelling canva.s.sers and touts to hawk their wares from door to door in the mean streets.

I remember once a fairly well-to-do working man--he was the doorkeeper of a public inst.i.tution in Manchester--had an action brought against him by a street tout because his dog, an Airedale terrier, had bitten the prowling fellow as he was coming in at the back door. The man was badly mauled, and the dog having been proved to have bitten several other people of a like nature, I had, much to my discontent, to give judgment for the plaintiff.

About a year afterwards--having forgotten all about the matter--I was visiting the inst.i.tution where the defendant was employed, when, as the gentleman I wished to see was engaged, the doorkeeper asked me to step into his lodge and sit down and wait.

"I've often wanted to see you, Mr. Porry," he began, "about that there dorg case."

"What case was that?" I asked.

"That case where you fined me five pounds over an Airedale what tried to gobble up a tally-man."

"I remember," I said doubtfully.

"Well," he continued, "you seemed to sympathise with me like, but you found against me. You see I had bought that dorg for the very purpose of keeping those fellows off the premises whilst I'm away. So I said if the law don't let 'im bite 'em, what's the use of the dorg? and what I wanted to arsk you was, may my dorg bite 'em within reason or did I 'ave to pay five pounds 'cause 'e mauled 'im too much?"

I explained the law in relation to dogs and tally-men as well as I could, and my friend was good enough to say when I had finished:

"Well, I quite see you 'ad to make me pay as the law stands, but it don't seem to me just. If you can't 'ave a dorg, how can you keep them fellows out of the house?"

That was more than I could answer. We parted friends--and there was, I think, a mutual feeling between us that the law of dogs in relation to tally-men was not all it should be.

And many laws that are made for the best purposes are wrested from their beneficent uses by the wicked ones of the world and turned to the basest advantages. No legislation was hailed with greater delight by social reformers than the Married Women's Property Act, and yet one must admit that the fraudulent use of its provisions is a commonplace. I am not suggesting that it is mainly against the poor that it is misused, though I have known of cases under the Workmen's Compensation Act where goods were alleged to be "in the wife's name" after an award had been made against the husband, and many a poor tradesman and small worker is swindled by this allegation, the victim not having the money to test it in a court of law, and the result being in any case so gloriously uncertain. I am sorry to put matrimony among the flat-traps, but the use of the married status among the dishonest to prevent a successful litigant from obtaining the results of a judgment brings it within this category. Even the poorer cla.s.ses themselves are beginning to make use of it as a kind of homestead law to protect their goods from execution.

Much as I am in favour of seeing the poor man's home protected to a larger degree than it is at present I do not care to see it achieved at the expense of the character of the occupants. Any law that is a constant temptation to dishonesty is an evil, and there is no doubt that when the day comes for legal reform on a large scale, the various questions relating to the position of the married woman in the eye of the law will have to be considered. In many cases, of course, the reforms will be towards the enlargement of women's liberty, but in the matter of holding property it is clear that where a wife or a husband is tacitly allowing credit to be obtained on his or her appearance of property that property should be available to discharge the debt notwithstanding that it is claimed as the special property of one or the other.

Menander, the Greek poet, in one of his comedies makes someone say, "To marry a wife, if we regard the truth, is an evil, but it is a necessary evil." If this was true in 300 B.C. it became more convincingly the truth in 1882 A.D., when the Married Women's Property Act became law, and the "peculiar gift of heaven" was welcomed by the unscrupulous trader as a statutory stay of execution. Since that day the Micawbers of this world have put all their available a.s.sets "in the wife's name."

The legal privileges of the married woman are not sufficiently well known.

Like "the infant" she is, indeed, the darling of the law. What a fine commercial spree an "infant" could have who looked older than his years and had an elementary knowledge of the law of "infants"! Luckily they do not teach anything useful at educational establishments, and the "infant"

never learns about his glorious legal status until it is too late to exploit it.

But a married woman can, and does, have a real good time at the expense of her own particular tyrant, man. Recently at Quarter Sessions a man was accused of stealing the spoons, and his wife was accused of receiving the property knowing it to have been stolen. But it was pointed out that it was one of the rights of a married woman to receive whatever her husband happened to bring home, and the judge directed an acquittal.

There are several pretty little distinctions in the criminal law in favour of the married lady, but perhaps it is not seemly to advertise them overmuch. When we come to so-called civil matters, the lady who does not know and exercise her legal privileges is indeed a _rara avis_. How many of the debt-collecting cases in the County Court are concerned with the good lady who runs into debt with the tally-man or other tradesman to the husband unknown? True, in many of these the husband has a possible defence, but the good man is generally a sporting, careless fellow, and pays his five shillings a month in the belief that debt is a natural sequence of matrimony.

But when it comes to committing wrongs--or torts, to use the Norman slang of the law--the married woman is the only legal personality that is privileged to forget her duty to her neighbour at someone else's expense.

Her unhappy husband is always liable for the damages and costs, although he may have done his best to hinder the wrong that has been done. If in his absence on the daily round the good lady slanders her neighbour's wife, or trespa.s.ses on her neighbour's garden to commit the further wrong of slapping her neighbour's infant, the husband, for the purposes of paying damages, is regarded by the law as being a joint offender. The law supposes that a wife acts under her husband's directions. When they told Mr. b.u.mble that, he replied in the immortal phrase, "If the law supposes that, the law is a a.s.s--a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law's a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience--by experience."

It does seem a bit hard on the poor man certainly. If he keeps a dog the animal may have his first bite at his neighbour free of expense, and when he gets to hear about it he can send the dog away. But with a wife there is no question of _scienter_. You may not suspect that your good lady is given to slander, a.s.sault and such like indiscretions, but, if it so happens, you have to pay. Nor do I see what steps you can take to hinder the lady from trespa.s.ses which she has the mind to commit. For if you were to place her under lock and key I believe a sentimental High Court judge would grant her a _habeas corpus_ that she might go out again into the wide, wide world and exercise her undoubted right of committing wrong at her husband's expense.

And I set down these disadvantages of husbandry as some sort of excuse for the meanness and dishonesty of the man who uses "his wife's name" to protect his a.s.sets and injure his creditors. I have in my mind a commercial married man auditing in his debit and credit mind the matrimonial balance sheet. "See," he says, "my liabilities under the law of husband and wife. Surely there must be some a.s.sets of the relationship in which I am ent.i.tled to partic.i.p.ate!" Then he studies the Married Women's Property Act, and chuckles. Whether this is so or not, there is no doubt that, since the Act of 1882, "Everybody's doing it," and when the bailiffs come in the furniture and the stock-in-trade are always found to be "in the wife's name." It is a form of conspiracy, you would say, and the police should put a stop to it, but "Old Father Antic the Law" has his answer for you there--a wife cannot be guilty of conspiracy with her husband, for husband and wife are one.

There was a story ill.u.s.trating the prevalence of this custom in the precincts of Strangeways, Manchester. Mr. Isaacs, who had been absent from business for some time, returned to his workshop looking pale and white and very weak. A sympathetic neighbour put his head in at the door, and, full of pity, said:

"Dear me, dear me, you look very ill, mine friend. Vot is the matter with you?"

"Ach," groaned Isaacs, "I have had a terrible time, a shocking bad time."

"Vot vas it all about?"

"I vill tell you," replied Isaacs. "The veek before last two doctors came to mine house and took avay mine appendix."

"Bah!" muttered his friend contemptuously. "I vonder at you. That vos all you own fault: you should have put it in the vife's name. Then they could not touch it."

The story might be told in a Scot's accent, or even a Welsh one for that matter, and it would represent with equal truth the prevalent outlook of mankind on the commercial advantages of matrimony. I by no means desire to suggest that "the wife's name" is made a baser use of by the eastern communities of Strangeways and Whitechapel than among the fair-haired Saxons of Surbiton and Chorlton-c.u.m-Hardy.

There are many people who see no wrong in doing what is within the law, and there has always been a human tendency to score off one's brother man by a smart trick since the days of Jacob and Esau. The fool will always be outwitted by the discreet ones of the world, who justify their ways by reminding us that we are only bound to obey the letter of the law, and that there is no duty cast upon us to interpret and respect its spirit.

And simple charitable folk will say that after all things may really be quite honest and straightforward, and it is only the stingy creditor who sees fraud and the ungenerous judicial mind that finds in the constant repet.i.tions of a series of happenings an intention in the parties to whom the events occur to wrong their neighbours.

For why should not John Smith put over the door of his shop "J. Smith,"

and how can the pleasant, careless fellow pay his debts in these bad times, and why do those wholesale curmudgeons press for their money and weary of John's winning smile and dangling tales of future payment? If creditors won't wait it is really very foolish in these days to sue for the money and put the bailiffs in. For friend John is away at the races and when they come and seize the stock and effects of "J. Smith" there is Mrs. Smith, dear, good lady, to whom of course everyone knows, or ought to know, the business belongs.

Is not she a married woman? Cannot she trade in her own name? Is not her name over the door--well, not her name exactly, but her initial--her full name is Jane Smith--and as for her husband, he has never been anything but a servant of hers, and now she is going to run the business herself!

In due course of evolution, no doubt, we shall breed this dishonesty out of the race, or else the kind of poor, simple tradesman who gives credit without inquiry will become extinct.

At present there are quite a number of people who regard laws not so much as guides to good conduct, but as difficulties to be overcome in the obstacle race of life. A learned king's counsel, a well-known expert in bankruptcy and bills of sale, told me of an interview he had with a secretary of a social society who came to ask him to deliver a lecture.

The secretary explained that their members were mostly cabinet makers and small furniture dealers, and they had a meeting and a discussion every month. The king's counsel agreed to come, and asked what sort of subject they would like him to speak about.

"Well," said the secretary, "our president, Mr. X----, you may know him----"

The king's counsel shook his head.

"Well, he has been bankrupt twice--I thought you might have met him. He proposed a very good subject, and the committee were quite pleased with it."

"And what did he suggest?"

"Well, seeing we are nearly all interested in the furniture trade, he thought there would be a good turn up if you would come and lecture on the Bills of Sale Acts and how to avoid them."

And I suppose a brainy man, with a good wife, and, what is almost as rare nowadays, a good bill of sale, can live on nothing for about as long as it can be done.

That candid poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, pointed out many years ago that the ancient decalogue did not cover all our sinful modern ways, and amended the eighth to run thus:

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat When it's so lucrative to cheat.

And surely we may ask, Why should this miserable cheat flourish among decent citizens of to-day? Should not a man or woman be made to trade in his or her own name? In a business community it is almost impossible to make adequate inquiries before you start trading, and why, if you come to think of it, should an individual desire to trade in any but his own name?

The frauds that are committed may not be very serious, but all forms of cheating and sharp dealing are detrimental to trade, and trade, after all, is the basis of our national pre-eminence. It seems particularly undesirable in a nation that prides itself on its domestic purity that "the wife's name" should be a symbol of dishonesty. If we cannot attain to a decent code of commercial morality without it we shall have to ask our four-hundred-pound legislators for yet another statute. "One man, one name, and make him trade in it," would be well received by all the honest, rich and poor, throughout the country.

I have dealt at some length with this question of putting goods in the wife's name because I doubt if folk whose business does not take them into the County Court have any idea how prevalent it is and what a very present help it is to the man who is living upon his neighbours by some semi-fraudulent business. Every now and then the setter of flat-traps catches a victim too strong and l.u.s.ty to remain in the trap. The shoddy gold watch is returned, the bogus business is thrown back on the exploiter's hands, the company promoter who has annexed the savings of the victim by false promises is sued for damages for deceit. In some of these cases by pertinacity and the spending of more money a triumphant judgment will be obtained by the fly against the spider. But there it ends. When the high bailiff visits the web he is politely informed that it is part of the wife's separate estate, every thread in the web is covered by a bill of sale, and if you try to imprison the old spider for debt you would find the greatest difficulty in proving his means to the satisfaction of the Court. Bankruptcy has no terrors for the old fellow. You will probably find that he has been there before and rather likes its old-world dusty crannies and the peaceable formulae of its schedules and accounts.