Maniacal Wives

"How long would you like to have your husband remain in jail?''

"Until he rots to death."

Such was the verbatim answer not of one vindictive ex-wife but of no less than 270, during the three years that indignant Executive Secretary Jack Anthony of the Alimony Reform League of New York State has been prying into the psychology of women who have their onetime mates jailed for nonpayment of alimony. Lately Dr. Lewis Madison Terman, distinguished Stanford University psychologist, after tabulating the results of a questionnaire, described the typical divorced woman as lacking "sweet femininity" but possessing "rugged strength, self-sufficiency and detached tolerance" (TIME, June 24). But Dr. Terman had no evidence that any of his rugged women were keeping their husbands in jail. The questionnaire which Mr. Anthony sent to jailing wives netted him --besides 109 blanks returned without comment, 29 vituperative letters and one communication threatening his person-- 800 filled-out blanks which led him to state last week that 552 (69%) of the writers were maniacs suffering from psychoses bordering on sadism.

"Why did you send your husband to jail?" asked Mr. Anthony. "He deserved it," answered 28% of the women. Desire to avenge some specific injury was indicated by 32% more. Other replies: "He was a louse" (or pig, bedbug, skunk, rat, cockroach, snake). Another: "My husband had the grace of a hippopotamus, the brain of a gnat, looked like a giraffe, stung like a wasp, had the personality of a dead salmon and he smelled like a stable full of dead horses." Another: "I heard so much about the alimony jail and I wanted to see the inside so badly that I sent my husband there so that I could visit him." "Are you satisfied now that your husband is in jail?" asked Mr. Anthony. Replies: satisfied, 63%; regretful, 21%; undecided, 16%.

Although Mr. Anthony had printed on his questionnaire form that answers need not be signed, 90% of the returns were signed anyway. Indeed 40% of the women called on him personally to enlarge their views.

Stanford's Dr. Terman had found that his typical divorced woman was inclined to be less mercenary than happily or unhappily married women. Mr. Anthony likewise found that his jailing wives were unmercenary, at least in the sense that they would rather discomfort their husbands than get money from them. When he pointed out to the women who called on him that no money would be forthcoming so long as the husband was in jail, the caller almost invariably replied: "That's all right; I'll get along without his money."

Mr. Anthony is divorced, pays alimony--"gladly." Asked last week if he had spent time in alimony jail, he parried politely: "Let's not go into that, shall we not?"

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