Rare. OCLC/COPAC record copies at BL, Bodley and Durham; Stanford and University of Portland only in the USA.
A very good unsophisticated copy of an unusual book which opens with an almost hysterical lament for the author’s recently deceased wife before discussing other matters such as the laws around bankruptcy and the “wrongs of women” in which Cox calls for the protection of women and the promotion of jobs specifically for women.
A remarkably personal long poem by Rev James Cox, Master of Gainsborough School which begins with his writing about his lately deceased wife (“written, in that dreadful week”) and with later reflections on her memory. The first part of the poem is written when, “The body is not yet interred.” (p.1) The poem opens up into a wider description of society (as Cox sees it) and particularly the role of women in society, this theme is returned to in the prose essays at the end of the book.
In his essay “The Wrong of Women” p.111), Cox bemoans the supposedly large number of destitute and vulnerable women on the streets of London:
““Whenever I visit that mart of all that is great and all that is shameful, the metropolis of England I find my compassion moved, and my indignation raised, by those wretched and diseased creatures, lost to honour and to happiness, with whom the streets in an evening are crowded” (p.111)
Cox continues by calling for men who have been found to have “seduced” a young woman would be faced with strong economic penalties which would (partly) help the injured female party:
“…let every man, who shall be convicted of seducing a woman, either under promise of marriage, or by an other allurements, be amerced, unless he make the amende honourable, in three fourths of his whole property; two parts of the forefiture to go to the assistance of the state, and the other part to the seduced, if found deserving of it. If we he have no property of any consequence, let him be compelled to devote the rest of his life to the service of his country. If a married man, some severer punishment must be subsisted” (p.114)
Cox also discusses how certain jobs should be reserved for women rather than being taken on by men:
“There are many employments, by which men are acquiring wealth, much better suit to women, and to discharge which, no satisfactory reason appears, why they may not be properly qualified. Among those is that alluded to in the lines, to which this discussion refers: an office, which nature herself seems to have confined to female agency. The indelicacy of male hair-dressers for ladies, male stay-makers, man-milliners, &c. against which moralists have long directed the shafts of ridicule, dwindles to a shadow in comparison with male accoucheurs [midwives]” (p.117)
