to place it in the hands of a trustee, to whose will she was subject. If she contemplated marriage, and desired to call her property her own, she was forced by law to make a contract with her intended husband, by which she gave up all title or claim to it. A woman, either married or unmarried, could hold no office of trust or power. She was not a person. She was not recognized as a citizen. She was not a factor in the human family. She was not a unit; but a zero, a nothing, in the sum of civilization.
To-day, a married woman can hold her own property, if it is held or bought in her own name, and can make a will disposing of it. A man is no longer the sole heir of his wife's property. A married woman can make contracts, enter into co-partnerships, carry on business, invest her own earnings for her own use and behoof,—and she is also responsible for her own debts. She can be executor, administrator, guardian or trustee. She can testify in the courts for or against her husband. She can release, transfer, or convey, any interest she may have in real estate, subject only to the life interest which the husband may have at her death. Thirty years ago, when the woman's rights movement began, the status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the English common law, her husband was her lord and master. He had the sole custody of her person, and of her minor children. He could "punish her with a stick no bigger than his thumb," and she could not complain against him.[1]But the real "thumb" story seems to have originated with a certain Judge Buller of England, who lived about one hundred years ago. In his ruling on one of those cases of wife-beating, now so common in our police courts, he said that a man had a right to punish his wife, "with a stick no bigger than his thumb." That was his opinion. Shortly after this some ladies sent the judge a letter in which they prayed him to give the size of his thumb! We are not told whether he complied with their request.]
The common law of this State held man and wife to be one person, but that person was the husband. He could by will deprive her of every part of his property, and also of what had been her own before marriage. He was the owner of all her real estate and of her earnings. The wife could make no contract and no will, nor, without her husband's consent, dispose of the legal interest of her real estate. He had the income of her real estate till she died, and if they ever had a living child his ownership of the
- ↑ The authority for this old "thumb" tradition, that "a man had the right to whip his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb," is found in an early edition of Phillip's Evidence. That book was authority in English common law and in it Phillips is quoted as saying, that according to the law of his day a husband "might lawfully chastise his wife with a reasonable weapon, as a broomstick," adding, however, "but if he use an unreasonable weapon, such as an iron bar, and death ensue, it would be murder."—[Chamberlin, p. 818.] But the real "thumb" story seems to have originated with a certain Judge Buller of England, who lived about one hundred years ago. In his ruling on one of those cases of wife-beating, now so common in our police courts, he said that a man had a right to punish his wife, "with a stick no bigger than his thumb." That was his opinion. Shortly after this some ladies sent the judge a letter in which they prayed him to give the size of his thumb! We are not told whether he complied with their request.]
