could be taken until after the Long Vacation.  The case came on for hearing first in November, 1878, and then in January, 1879.  All access to the children had been denied me, and the money due to me had been withheld.  By this my opponent had put himself so completely in the wrong that even the Master of the Rolls uttered words of severe condemnation of the way in which I had been treated.  Then a curious interlude took place.  The Master of the Rolls advised me to file a counter-claim for divorce or for judicial separation, and I gladly agreed to do so, feeling very doubtful as to the Master of the Rolls’ power to do anything of the kind, but very glad that he should think he had the authority.  While the claim was being prepared, I obtained access to the children under an interim order, as well as the money owing to me, and at the end of March the case again came before the Master of the Rolls.  The claim filed alleged distinct acts of cruelty, and I brought witnesses to support the claim, among them the doctor who had attended me during my married life.  Mr. Ince filed an answer of general denial, adding that the acts of cruelty, if any, were “done in the heat of the moment”.  He did not, however, venture to contest the case, although I tendered myself for cross-examination, but pleaded the deed of separation as a bar to further proceedings on my part; I argued on the other hand that as the deed had been broken by the plaintiff’s act, all my original rights revived.  Sir George Jessel held that the deed of separation condoned all that had gone before it, if it was raised as a bar to further proceedings, and expressed his regret that he had not known there would be “any objection on the other side”, when he advised a claim for a judicial separation.  On the final hearing of the case in April in the Rolls’ Court Sir George Jessel decided that the deed of separation was good as protecting Mr. Besant from any suit on my part to obtain a decree for the restitution of conjugal rights, although it had been set aside on the one matter of value to me—­the custody of my child.  The net result of the proceedings was that had I gone to the Divorce Court in 1873, I might at least have obtained a divorce a mensa e thoro; that in my desire to avoid publicity, and content in what I believed to be secure possession of my child, I had agreed to a deed which fully protected Mr. Besant against any action on my part, but which could be set aside by him for the purpose of robbing me of my child.

The argument in the Court of Appeal came on during April, and was, as I expected, decided against me, the absolute right of the father being declared, and a married mother held to have no sort of claim over her own children.  The worst stigma affixed to marriage by the law of England is this ignoring of any right of the married mother to her child; the law protects the unmarried, but insults the married, mother, and places in the hands of the legal husband an instrument of torture whose power to agonise depends on the tenderness and strength of the motherliness of the wife.  In fact the law says to every woman:  “Choose which of these two positions you will have:  if you are legally your husband’s wife you can have no legal claim to your children; if legally you are your husband’s mistress, then your rights as mother are secure”.