Florence Gerrard, daughter of the Head Master of Grammar School (1 min. 35sec.); second, Miss Nellie Thompson (1 min. 50sec.); third, Miss Rose Macfarlane; fourth, Miss Annie Shean. Nine finished. The first prize was a gold medal and the championship.

ANOTHER match took place between ladies on September 27th, at Southsea. There were ten entries and nine competitors started. Miss Lottie Green, who only became a swimmer this season, won the race.

A LADY who signed herself "The mother of five swimmers," wrote to the Times lately that two young ladies (sisters) swam about three miles, from Shanklin to Sandown, in one hour. "The tide was in their favour, but a strong wind was against them or they would have done it with ease in less time."

JUSTICE FOR WOMEN.-The farcical administration of justice with regard to the maltreatment of wives calls for constant comment. A big ruffian was charged on Tuesday with violently assaulting his wife, kicking her, and fracturing three of her ribs. The magistrate thought "a more horribly brutal assault he had never heard of." These are strong words for a Metropolitan magistrate, and it may be presumed he inflicted the utmost punishment the law would permit. This appears to be six months with hard labour. A man was the same day sentenced to half that term of imprisonment, hard labour included, for stealing a few pounds' worth of clothes.-Westminster Gazette.

AN Art College for ladies has been opened in Merton Road, South Wimbledon.

CONGRESS OF WORKING WOMEN.-In the Brystone Hall, Old Street, St. Luke's, September 8th, a Congress of Working Women was held, under the presidency of Mrs. C. Blunt, to discuss the grievances of which women employed in various trades complain, and the best means of remedying them. There was a large attendance of working women and other persons interested in the question of female labour. Mrs. Blunt stated that she belonged to the sewing machinists, and, from her own experience and that of others, she could reasonably affirm and logically prove that no class of working women were so misused and underpaid as

sewing machinists. They were merely slaves under another name. She desired the public to take cognisance of the fact that in London, women and girls who had to find their own machines, cotton, and expenses, were paid for making ladies' ulsters and jackets the miserably low sum of 2s. a dozen. Miss Clara Chatwin moved: "That this Conference of working women of the metropolis, having heard the complaint of the sewing machinists, is of opinion that they should be better paid, and it appeals to the public and the press to assist it in their efforts to obtain justice for a very heavily over-worked class of working women." Miss Easton seconded the resolution, which was supported by other speakers, and carried unanimously. Miss E. Handcock then came forward to speak on behalf the cigar-makers. After dealing with various details of the question involved, she concluded by moving a similar resolution on behalf the cigar-makers. This was seconded by Miss Danilles, and supported by the Misses White, Hamilton Cox, and others, and carried. Similar resolutions were carried in favour of the matchmakers' factory and others, and the Congress closed.Telegraph.

FOREIGN NOTES AND NEWS.

FRANCE.

ANOTHER lady, Miss Helen Johnston Bouchier, of English origin, has obtained her medical diploma.

THE National Academy of Medicine has given a sum of 500 francs to Madame Subra (widow Boric) residing at Algiers, for the services she has rendered to vaccination.

THE National School of Design has appointed the following ladies as laureates.

Prize of Honour, Mdlle. Mathilde Villeneuve, (27 nominations); Academy, Mdlls. Estelle Rey and Mathilde Lavigne; Sculpture, Mdlls. Anne Bartoloni and Cecile Bertrand; Painting, Mdlls. Pauline Gerard and Anna Latour; Anatomy, Mdlls. Mathilde Villeneuve and Anais Massyn: Engraving, Mdlls. Marie Aliot, Therese Gerard, Marie Felix, and Mathilde Wiet; China Painting, Mdlls. Marguerite Delobel and Eugenie Flatte.

THE rosette of Office of Public Instruction has been given to Mdme. Bonnet, directress of the normal school at Besancon, and Mdlle. Marandon of Montyel, directress of the National School of Design for girls.

BY a decree of August 6th, the Union des femmes de France has been declared to be an institution of public usefulness.

THE great French railway companies have for some time employed women as ticket and audit clerks, as also have the Crédit Foncier and several banks and public companies in France. The Corporation of the City of Paris mean also to employ women in their offices, and 300 situations are offered in the 20th arrondissement.

On

SECONDARY education for girls is progressing rapidly. October 2nd a school of this nature was opened at Pont-a-Mousson, and on the same day with great solemnity a lyceum for girls at Rouen. At the opening of the institution at Rouen, the Minister of Public Instruction made an excellent defence of the cause of higher education, and dwelt on the increase of domestic happiness which would result from a woman becoming the intime compagnon of her husband. That incompatibility of feeling which is the inevitable consequence of a different primary education would disappear. What we wish is, said M. Duvaux, that the girl should learn to think that her innate qualities of feeling, imagination, and tenderness should be coupled with more masculine habits, preventing the qualities from being traded upon to the detriment of her rectitude and judgment. Such wise words are full of encouragment for the success of the lycée which is almost the first of its kind and was opened with fitting ceremony. It is announced that the official opening of the Lyceum for girls at Nantes will take place to-day, the 15th. The Municipal Council of Blois has asked leave to establish a similar institution.

THE Eliza-Lemonnier technical school for girls in Paris are commenced work for the session on October 2nd. These schools prepare girls for many employments, and their course of instruction lasts three years. They teach, besides a good general education, bookkeeping and commercial knowledge, industrial design, wood-engraving, china-painting, painting on blinds, artificial flower-making and the making of linen and millinery. A committee assists the pupils who have finished their education to find work, and helps them with advice and sympathy. Moreover, the former pupils of the schools have formed themselves into an association to assist the new comers. There are four schools; 31, Rue des Francs, Bourgeois; 18, Rue Duperre; 70, Rue d'Assas; 23, Rue de Reuilly.-Gazette des Femmes.

WOMEN AS RELIEVING OFFICERS.-In France, says a recent authority on the Poor Law, the duties of relieving officers, and the work of in-door relief, are largely performed by members of female religious orders, who, it is said, discharge the various tasks of supervision, inquiry, and furnishing reports, with much devotion and intelligence. They receive salaries for their work.

THE

ENGLISHWOMAN'S REVIEW.

(NEW SERIES.)

No. CXV.-NOVEMBER 15TH, 1882.

ART. I.-ARE WIVES SUPPORTED?

AMONG the amusing paragraphs lately circulated in the variety column of newspapers is one which contains a deeper lesson than they can ordinarily boast of. "A husband advertised in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, England, that he, Thomas A-, would no longer be answerable for the debts incurred by his wife. The wife retorted: This is to certify that I, Elizabeth Aam able to pay my own debts, now that I have got shut of Tommy.'

This retort is a very pointed comment upon the theory that has prevailed up to the present day, namely, that the husband was the bread-winner and stay of the household, and that the subordinate members, including wife and children, were supported by him, unprofitable members of the community, consumers instead of producers. To what degree is this true, and to how great an extent are the wives of all the great working classes, who form the bone and sinew of English life, supported by their husbands?

The passing of the Married Women's Property Act, which has so gloriously distinguished the Parliamentary Session of this year, has been the means of securing property to the amount of many millions into the hands of women, hitherto unjustly deprived of its control. The previous Act of 1870, now included in the larger

Act, had proclaimed the right of a married woman to the wages which she had earned by her own labour. No one doubts the justice of these two measures, or if a few specimens of that nearly extinct species, the believers in the divine right of husbands, still exist, they are dying away, and the next generation will know them no more. But between the women who possess inherited property, and the women who, from the improvidence or incapacity of their husbands, are obliged to leave their homes to earn wages for the support of the family, there is the still larger class who find occupation for their fullest energies in the home itself, in cooking, scouring, making and mending their husbands' and children's clothes, and bearing, nursing, and sometimes teaching the children. The question arises: Are these women supported? Are they only consumers, or a most important section of the producers of the country's wealth? Do they do anything to earn their own living, and, if so, how can it be secured to them?

A young man and woman agree to marry, and they bring into the joint partnership, not real or personal property, inherited or acquired, but their heads and hands only. The man's head and hands are occupied out of doors; he is the visible wage-earner; he works ten or twelve hours and brings home enough, if he does not spend it at the public-house, to buy necessaries for the family. Perhaps by extra industry on his part, or extra good management on hers, he saves and puts by money. She, on her part, has kept a decent and comfortable home for him, has laid out his earnings for their mutual benefit, and has borne and brought up their family of children, and, as any one who has been in like circumstances will acknowledge, has worked not only through the day of twelve hours, but half the night also. She has laboured in her own vocation as hard as he has; she has economised, contrived, schemed, saved, giving the whole of her time and brains to the common stock, and he has done no more. And yet the ordinary theory is that this woman is supported all her life, and the law, even this law, which is incomparably juster and more generous than any that has hitherto