[Indexed as: “Sobby Tales of Wives Convict Many Men, Woman Judge Says – But Seattle Justice Proposes to Give Husbands Square Deal,” Anonymous, Boston Globe (Ma.) (originally in Pittsburg Gazette-Times (Pa.)), Aug. 28, 1921]
Every dog has a day and even that of this poor, overburdened wife-ridden husband appears to have arrived at last. The time-honored combination of a woman’s tears and a sympathetic masculine judge has been shattered. A woman is the iconoclast. She is judge Rhea M. Whitehead, presiding member of the Superior Court of Seattle.
“A Husband is going to get a square deal in my court,’ she announces to the world. “Too many men are convicted on sobby tales of wives!”
The condition which this learned woman jurist deplores can be seen anywhere in the country in any court where domestic woes are aired, some husbands aver. The scene and the setting are identical, they say. The husband is arraigned before the court. His wife, her relatives and friends occupying the front benches, steps forward.
The complaining wife then unburdens herself. Occasionally she may punctuate her recital with looks of injured feelings vaguely cast in the direction of her recalcitrant spouse. Then, having skillfully constructed her atmosphere much as a dramatist leads to a climax, she suddenly produces her handkerchief, clutches the railing before her, lets forth a heart-rending sob and the flood-gates of her tears. Thereupon the Court thunders a denunciation of the prisoner the bar and enters an order of commitment or fine or alimony, as the case may be, and all the men on hand applaud in their hearts and cry out that here is a just judge and a rascally husband.
Husbands Have Equal Chance.
“In my court,” declares Judge Whitehead, “men and women will stand equal. That a woman is a dependent, helpless creature is an outworn notion, and I have absolutely no patience with a woman who comes into my court charging her husband with nonsupport merely to have the law make him stand and deliver. Some masculine judges are so sentimental that they often enter judgments against husbands without even giving the defendant a chance to be heard.”
Judge Whitehead is not the only woman jurist who holds the attitude that “playing the sex” is no business for the courtroom. Judge Florence E. Allen of the Court of Common Pleas, Cleveland, O, speaking before the Women Lawyers’ Association, deplored the tendency of men jurors to render verdicts in favor of women litigants on sentimental grounds whether the woman be the accused or the accuser. It recalls the famous instance in New York City, where the court ordered a curtain in front of the shapely ankles of Betty Inch because the men jurors seemed to concentrate their attention on the ankles rather than the testimony. [Betty Inch, an actress, was accused of blackmail in several divorce cases.]
“This fault should be corrected,” Judge Allen says. “It is not born of chivalry, but of what men choose to call chivalry, something totally different.”
“Criminal men take advantage of this condition. They use woman to perform acts essential to crime, counting on a woman to serve as a screen and as a blind. They figure that if she is arrested she will be acquitted and that would weaken the case against them. It is quite true that all men – lawyers, judges, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and jurors – are inclined to be lenient with a woman on trial or in any way connected with a case. The leniency is not deliberate, but instinctive. Pretty women are all too likely to make a man loose his balance.”
Calls It “A Step Forward”
Max Hertzfeld, a lawyer, of New York city who framed the law by which the famous “Alimony Club” was wiped out of existence by making it lawful for a woman to have her husband arrested and committed to jail as many times as he fell behind in the payment of alimony instalments declared that the views of the women judges were most encouraging. Before lawyer Hertzfeld had the law changed a man became immune to arrest for nonsupport after he had spent 30 days in the “Alimony Club” in the civil prison.
“The attitude of these women jurists is a step forward,” he said. “At the present time I am urging Major John F. Hylan of New York City to appoint a committee to act as arbiters of domestic difficulties. In my opinion there are many cases of marital discord which could be patched up by keeping them out of court. A court is a court whether it is a domestic relations tribunal or not. It has the flavor and also the opprobrium.”
“Women go before a justice, become hysterical, permit their imaginations to run riot and the damage is done. Reconciliation becomes remote. An the husband hasn’t a chance when the excited wife begins to weep. I advocate that this committee be formed where women’s tears would not be effective nor necessary, but where proceedings without publicity could settle the differences and send the quarrelsome couple home together.”
“It is the instinctive prejudice that men feel toward a woman’s court that embitters a man against his wife who has him apprehended, because he fears that he cannot even hope for a fair and impartial judgment.” – Pittsburg Gazette-Times