an Camorrista, according to Russo, wives are very
badly treated. Expression is given to this fact in the popular
songs. But the women only feel themselves tenderly loved when
they are badly treated by their husbands; the man who does not
beat them they look upon as a fool. It is the same in the east
end of London. "If anyone has doubts as to the brutalities
practised on women by men," writes a London magistrate, "let him
visit the London Hospital on a Saturday night. Very terrible
sights will meet his eye. Sometimes as many as twelve or fourteen
women may be seen seated in the receiving room, waiting for their
bruised and bleeding faces and bodies to be attended to. In nine
cases out of ten the injuries have been inflicted by brutal and
perhaps drunken husbands. The nurses tell me, however, that any
remarks they may make reflecting on the aggressors are received
with great indignation by the wretched sufferers. They positively
will not hear a single word against the cowardly ruffians.
'Sometimes,' said a nurse to me, 'when I have told a woman that
her husband is a brute, she has drawn herself up and replied:
"You mind your own business, miss. We find the rates and taxes,
and the likes of you are paid out of 'em to wait on us."'"
(Montagu Williams, _Round London_, p. 79.)

"The prostitute really loves her _souteneur_, notwithstanding all
the persecutions he inflicts on her. Their torments only increase
the devotion of the poor slaves to their 'Alphonses.'
Parent-Duchatelet wrote that he had seen them come to the
hospital with their eyes out of their heads, faces bleeding, and
bodies torn by the blows of their drunken lovers, but as soon as
they were healed they went back to them. Police-officers tell us
that it is very difficult to make a prostitute confess anything
concerning her _souteneur_. Thus, Rosa L., whom her 'Alphonse'
had often threatened to kill, even putting the knife to her
throat, would say nothing, and denied everything when the
magistrate questioned her. Maria R., with her face marked by a
terrible scar produced by her _souteneur_, still carefully
preserved many years afterward the portrait of the aggressor, and
when we asked her to explain her affection she replied: 'But he
wounded me because he loved me.' The _souteneur's_ brutality only
increases the ill-t