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REFERENCE
Form 178 rev. 01-07
FORM 19
SOCIAL SCIENCES DIVISION
CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY
Ann cm
ITU CTATr prnrr-r
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/screamquietlyornOOOOpizz
Scream Quietly
or the
Neighbors Will Hear
Erin Pizzey
Ridley Enslow Publishers
60 Crescent Place, Box 301
Short Hills, N.J. 07078
l
Acknowledgements
To the mothers and children who have contributed
to this book, and to Margaret Hofmann who typed it.
I would also like to thank Jack Ashley, Neville
Vincent and John Pontin for giving the mothers and
children a future and Dr. John Gayford who is
carrying out research on battered wives.
Copyright © 1977 by Ridley Enslow Publishers
Copyright © 1974 by Erin Pizzey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means
without the written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pizzey, Erin, 1939-
Scream quietly or the neighbors will hear.
1. Wife beating. 2. Cruelty to children.
3. Social service — Great Britain. I. Title.
HV6626.P58 1977 362.8’2 77-23406
ISBN 0-89490-005-6
Printed in the United States of America
109876
11
SOCIAL SCIENCES DIVf
CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBR
m
SOUTH STATE SIT
CHICAGO, IL 60605
Contents
Introduction to the American Edition 5
1. A House for Women 9
2. A Man’s Home is His Castle 26
3. Battered Mothers, Beaten Children 47
4. The Child is Father to the Man 71
5. Problem — What Problem? 91
6. The Law — For What It’s Worth 112
7. Where Do We Go From Here? 130
Afterword to the American Edition
by Mildred Daley Pagelow 144
Introduction to the
American Edition
Since this book was published in England much has happened to
Chiswick Women’s Aid. In 1971 it was the only place in England or,
indeed, the world that would take any woman (with or without her
children) on the run from a violent relationship. Now there are at
least seventy refuges in the United Kingdom. None, alas, have had
the courage to open their doors to take in all women who knock,
which means that we have always suffered from grievous overcrowd¬
ing. However, the numbers in Chiswick have been kept manageable
by a program of squatting (occupying empty houses) but these
dwellings still have more inhabitants than the public health law
allows. As a result, a series of court cases have been instigated by
Hounslow Council to curb the overcrowding. If they finally get a
conviction, once we have exhausted appeals against sentencing, I
face the possibility of three months in jail. This is another example of
the ignorance and apathy of those who run this country. It is obvious
to any thinking individual that the issue is not one of overcrowding to
be punished by threatened jail sentences, but rather that the roots of
violence lie behind the front door. In fact, there will never be an end
to the wars on our streets until we have peace in the home.
We currently are looking for handing from abroad as our govern¬
ment persists in turning a blind eye to our pioneering efforts. If we
agree to restrict our numbers and close our “open door” the govern¬
ments have promised to return our grants and give us every encour¬
agement. But we believe that the open door, which offers refuge for
any desperate mother, is vital. There has to be somewhere in this
country, or any other for that matter, that a woman knows will take
her in. If we give up, the danger will be that all refuges will exhibit a
tidy number of families and the government will say that this
particular social problem has been solved. Hundreds of thousands of
desperate women with their children will have been turned away to
go back into their nightmare life because there will be no records that
they knocked and no one answered the door.
4
A hundred years ago there was a paper on wife torture in England.
It came to the same conclusions that we do now. It said very clearly
that battered children born to the rule of the boot and the fist grow up
to repeat that pattern. There was a Select Committee that gathered
information and made recommendations then, just as there was a
committee that made recommendations eighteen months ago. Ear¬
lier the subject always sank without trace. It has now resurfaced and
there is little danger that it will happen again because the alarm has
been heard far beyond England.
At the present time the staff members of Chiswick are on welfare
because I can no longer afford to pay them, but no one has left. The
building is structurally dangerous but the work with the highly
disturbed mothers and children goes on. We have our own school
house and a teenage project. But I bitterly regret that we had to close
the project for husbands because of a lack of funds. This work was
done with the cooperation of the violent partner, who admitted his
violence and discussed his rage and anger, in the safe and secure
understanding that we did not consider him a brute but a badly
damaged child. The fact that our arms were open to fathers, as well as
mothers and children, was invaluable. One day we will continue this
work but at present we have to concentrate on what we can with our
limited resources.
Although the picture is somewhat bleak for us in England, I think
we must remember that is usually the case for most pioneer groups
who break new ground. I am convinced within the next few years we
will be on our feet with our controversial theories understood and
accepted, and all will be well. My confidence comes largely from the
feedback from abroad. It is enormously exciting to have visitors from
all over the world come into Chiswick just to say, “Hello, we’ve come
to see you.” The whole community of mothers and staff get cups of
coffee organized and we all talk about their country, our country, or
just generally. Recently I have been invited to other countries to see
for myself what is being done and to lecture about our work at
Chiswick.
Australia opened the first refuge outside of England. It was called
“Elsie.” Next, two women from Amsterdam lived in our refuge for a
week and then went back to Amsterdam where they begged the
government for refuge for Dutch women. They were told that this
kind of violence was an English problem. The Dutch women could
not be shaken off and squatted in a derelict house. Overnight
5
fourteen mothers arrived on their doorstep with their children. The
government backed down and the Dutch women have had a refuge
ever since. Women in France are having a much tougher time. There
are groups waiting to open refuges but they are almost totally ignored
by the government. The French laws on divorce, custody, and
maintenance are heavily weighted on the man’s side. It will be a
struggle not only for France but any Roman Catholic country to
develop refuges. However, there are many men and women who are
prepared to devote themselves to this cause, so there is hope. The
Berlin government was the first government actively to encourage
and sponsor refuges. We were invited to lecture there and to our
amazement a thousand people crowded the lecture hall. The refuge
is now open with other houses opening in Cologne, Stuttgart, and
Munich. Geneva has just put out a film on the problems of violence
there and efforts are being made to get a refuge open there as well.
The pattern is kaleidoscopic. Many idealistic people have opened
refuges only to find with horror that the women who arrive have
neither been grateful nor docile. Many women, as we know from our
experiences, have been as violent as the men they have left and also
batter their children. Some women have a relationship with a man
who subsequently turns out to be violent. She needs help to lift the
chains of compassion, guilt, and pity that bind her to the little boy she
has married. A small percentage of the women we see have a
relationship with violence and the men involved are almost inciden¬
tal because she will replace one violent man with another, dragging
her disturbed children with her. These are the women who need
intensive therapy. This is also the family that will exasperate and
sicken the staff of the refuges who have not yet learned these
women’s need for chaotic behavior interspersed with hazardous
adventures. One could say that the women and children have become
“hooked” on their own adrenalin and the crisis refuge must act as a
deescalating station and hold these families sometimes for as long as
two to four years before they can be safely reintegrated into the
community. This is being learned in all countries that are opening
refuges. The research and resulting conclusions are likely to shake
the “caring” institutions the world over.
In March 1977, four of us decided to go to America to see what was
happening there. We borrowed the money for the flights and set off
with several bookings for lectures. I had always been puzzled by the
silence from America on the subject of wife-beating. I knew it was
6
