The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-06-06
The Safety Of Women.

Swinburne ignorantly chants the close of
winter as ending
"Fhe season of SHOWS and sins"
With the warm weather, statstcians like
Quetelet on the contrary, assure us the
reign of crimes against the person COM
mences; and though it cannot fairly be said
that we have been tormented as yet this
year with any intolerable heats, glance
at the police record of the newspapers
must suffice to show that in the dark
calendar of sin May has been written down
as hot month. Other than climatic in
fuences may very well be supposed to have
had their share in bringing this to pass. To the
'canker of long peace" has succeeded the in
fammation of a long war; and it is hardly
surprising that the systematic excitement by
all possible means of the passions of a whole
people for five consecutive years, should be
daily bringing forth the fruits of violence and
outrage. The war-spirit is like the Demon
of the Broomstick in Southey's poem-he
keeps on bringing up his buckets long after
the tubs have been filled, and the house is
threatened with a flood. But one special
form in which crime against the person has
of late been manifesting itself demands more
used to be the reasonable boast of the American
people that respect for women was their uni
veTsal characteristic. The tourists, like
Marryatt, who ridiculed American prudery,
and invented fables about piano-legs in panta-
let's, were forced to admit that the squeamish-
ness of phrase at which they laughed their
horse-laughs was but the grotesque expression,
after all, of very genuine and most honorable
regard for the delicacy and the virtue of
women. The most recent French writer on
our social institutions, M. earlier, prefaces
some pretty sharp and puugent criticisms upon
our domestic notions and habits by declaring
that sin America woman is under the shield of
public opinion And this, he adds, sis no
unmeaning word; for however inexperienced
in life, woman may travel alone and pass
through the whole United States without man
daring to hazard a word or a gesture in her
presence which could offend her." This is
meant for sincere praise, and taken historically,
it was once not undeserved. But it begins now
to read, in the light of recent days, very like a
piece of malignant satire. 1t is so far from
being true that a woman can now travel in
safety alone through the whole United States,
that in so quiet and puritanical city as Brook
lyn it has actually become unsafe for women
to venture out alone after dark from one
house to anotherin the public streets Scarcely
a day passes without its story, from one or
another quarter of the Union, of the most re-
voting outrages perpetrated upon helpless
women. At no time could such phenome-
non be passed over lightly by those whose
duty it is to keep watch on the walls
of the social order. But we are entering
now upon the season which annually fills
the highways and by-Ways of the land
with travellers of both sexes, in search
of health and recreation. Families, accus-
tened to the quiet and security Of life in
their own homes, are beginning now to be
! dispersed over the country in all direc-
tions and it is proper, therefore, to call
| the particular attention, not only of their
natural protectors, but of all who are charged
with the police of the land, to the recent, Omi-
nous multiplication of offenses which it has
heretofore been our habit to think of, when we
thought of them at all, as the exclusive Gala
nifty of remote and barbarous nations. This
multiplication is so marked, and it is to be
observedinso many widely-separated regions of
our country, that 1t may almost be described
as sort of moral epidemic not safely to be
left out of their calculation by those who are
preparing themselves for their annual hegira.
lTue, 1t is at our own doors as we'll as in the
lanes OF New England, and in the fields OF the
west. But there is certain measure of seou-
rity to be found in the numbers of our popu-
latlon, even where the inadequacy of our spe-
clal ponce system is most fragrant and most
conspicuous; and those chronic perils Of
~honses IN the country" which William
Howitt so graphically paints in his 'Rural
Life In England" I" are almost ALI horn of thf
isolation OF country life.
II IS not an agreeable Suggestion. we know
to make to those who are contempiating sum
mer jaunts for themselves and those who arc
dear to them, that 1t will no longer be safe e
count upon the "shield of public opinion" a,