The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-01-17
IMMORTALITY IN FRANCE.
The Large Number OF Men Murdered by
Their Mattresses.
Du~

The number of men in France murdered
by their nnistrcsses, and vice versa, as ex-
hihited III the police reports for the year
1880, are calculated 10 suggest the query
very forcibly: Are not such crimes on the
increase? And has this particular phase of
social morality, peculiarly prevalent or no
ticeable in France, some special influence
toward the sort of crime in question? The
native observer Of such phenomena will
shake his head in the negative to both in
terrogations. Such crimes. lie will say. are
purely passional. The fact that the assas-
sin and the victim are or are not united BY
the legal matrimonial tie has nothing %
do with the crime and its motives One
may even go further in speaking
of France and say that the reg,i-
larity or irregularity Of a household
has nothing 10 do with the morality
of the individuals composing il. Irregular
households are very numerous in France.
especially in the large towns. They are
constituted for various reasons, among
which reasons Of an immoral nature are
the exception. Among the working
classes the forinalities and expenses of the
marriage ceremony are often the initial
cause of the irregnlarity The man or the
woman often tnd difficulty in getting the
necessary papers and birth certificates from
tAtt ft0hluNtt AAtTtES WHERE If OF SIle MHS
born. The trouble Of repeated visits To
administrative offices where the employees
are rough aud disohliging. the loss of time,
the expense, etc. lead couplcs to get mar
ried naturally without the aid of the civil
authorities As for the religious cere-
mony of marriage. ii must be remembered
that the working classes in the towns are
detached from Catholicism: they are. for
the most part freethinaers and frankly
anti-elerical. The intervention of the priest
Is thus easily dispensed with, both BY the
man and by the woman. The ceremony of
civil marriage being troublesome and that
of religious marriage being neither re-
quired by the laws of the land nor greatly
respected By the people-in France re-
ligious marriage ceremony is q pure luxury
One can easily understand how the work
ing classes get In the habit of contracting
free unions. which they may or NAV not
Tegularize in after life In the middle
classes free unions are common among en-
pioves, particularly for whom habit trans
forms a passing iiais0H into oollqas which
often lasts until death parts the couple.
Among artists and journalists there are
perhaps rs many unmarried as married
men, and but few that are solitary. In
fact in the city of Paris 10 per cent. of the
households are irregular, the total being
some $1,000
Now, such being the case. it is hardly
reasonable to consider man and woman
who live together and form a household.
and sometimes family, as being lover
and mistress with all the stigma of i'm
morality which those words imply in
English, the more SO as these unions are
often infinitely more moral, more exem-
plary, and more completely respectable
than many unions that have been
ieEallzed by the mayor and bles-
sed by the priest. The point 10
be considered is the frequency or infre-
quency of passional crime in the case of
persons living together either in regular or
irregular conditions. In the majority of
cases Il IS the husband or the lover who at
tesnpts the life of the wife or mistress from
motives OF jealousy
In France during the past year vitriol
throwing. so common a few years ago, has
almost gone out of fashion