Women, (In)Security and the City

On Sunday, September 10, 1893, at about 11 p.m., in the vicinity of ul. Rappaporta, Maria Kopańska, a maid, was attacked by four men — Stanisław Julian Starzewski, Michał Bendyk, Antoni Równy and Emil Bilo. The company was returning from a restaurant on ul. Szpitalna. As they later admitted, they "had been drinking vodka and beer" there. On ul. Rappaporta they saw Maria, who was walking home alone from a wedding. For the woman, the encounter ended in a gang rape. The court proceedings, which soon began on the victim's claim, although confirming the fact of violence, released three defendants from criminal liability. The fourth one, Emil Bilo, was never brought to trial, he was wanted by the police. The court advised the complainant to seek a recompense by applying to a civil court.

Among similar proceedings under the Austrian Criminal Code for sexual violence offenses, such as §127 "rape", §125 "rape of an innocent girl" (Polish "zbrodnia zgwałcenia niewiasty"), and §128 "crime of disgracing" ("zbrodnia zhańbienia"), this criminal case was a rather illustrative case. It seems to tell a lot not only about the judicial process of that time but also about the then city and its environment. Especially taking into account the manifold voices of testimony recorded within the court proceedings: that of the prosecution and the defense, witnesses and jurors in their efforts to clarify the circumstances of the case. Beyond the language of criminal cases, often virtually the only one, it is possible to "see" the city of that time in its marginal experiences, women's ones in particular.

The gender division established for the 19th century, which divided the public and private spheres into that of men and that of women, where the former was considered entirely the domain of men and the latter was a female prerogative, made all women to some extent marginalized in urban space. Until the late 19th century, a separate appearance of a woman from a higher class in the street or in public places was not considered comme il faut. This local feature was most often recorded by travelers, usually explaining it by a local manifestation of the old order. While arranging a student apartment in Lviv for her daughter Nastya, Maria Hrinchenko, to her surprise, heard the housewife's request that Nastya be accompanied to the university by a maid, because otherwise it would be a "bad example" for her own adult daughters.

As the women entered into education and labor market more and more, ostracism against women and public spaces started to gradually disappear. However, homes remained seen as the best (safest) places for women for a long time due to the element of danger to which women exposed themselves while out unaccompanied. Those who belonged to the underprivileged social classes were less likely to be affected by such reservations, at least because of the need to earn livelihood and related responsibilities. However, they were by no means more insured against the consequences of urban dangers, on the contrary.

Women in the city did not exist at all at night. Except, of course, prostitutes, who, according to Judith Walkowitz, were "the main characters of urban fantasies." Therefore, the danger that women in the city exposed themselves to at night was their personal problem. Maria Kopańska's case illustrates this. It is clear that the court classified her as a prostitute, despite the fact that there was no evidence to support this. Although it was Maria who represented the accusation, she had to explain how it was that she, an unmarried woman, had two children. Moreover, she was judged in terms of her moral behavior. One of the jury's questions to the witness of the case was: "Did you consider that girl [Maria] decent?". Witness Tadeusz Białowąs formulated his judgment with his answer: "She walked straight, did not look back."

Even if there was a single strategy in their defence, the accused men did not try very hard to follow it. They behaved in a contradictory way. Each of them, in fact, confirmed the fact of rape by others, instead posing as an innocent witness to the event. At the same time, some of the defendants testified to the woman's struggle and her asking to be released. "I said I was expecting, I wanted to give them money to let me go," Maria testified in court. "I had 21 cents in a handkerchief, so I wanted to give the money to them so that they would let me go; one of them unwrapped the handkerchief and then threw it away […] One of them pressed me on the face and from that moment on I was so frightened that I did not see anything. I do not recognize any of these present defendants, because it was dark." A detailed description of the struggle, persuasion or negotiation was important in rape cases. The degree of effort expended by a woman to protect herself was especially important here. Apparently because of this, the jury wondered why the woman had not run away as soon as she had seen the men approaching.

In general, rape cases illustrate a woman's place in society at that time very accurately. The law did not protect a female person as such, but her honor. Thus, those women who, according to the then notions, had lost their honor could not be victims of rape. The legal interpretation of women's honor was similar to the interpretation of goods. If a woman's chastity was violated before rape, the offender could not be held liable because he was considered not to have caused harm. This positioning of sexual violence was based on the 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina law according to which "dishonest women" (prostitutes) could not be raped. This legal feature not only subordinated women and determined their place in the patriarchal social hierarchy, but also essentially made male rapists defenders of the patriarchy interests, maintaining a climate of fear that helped to subdue and keep all women in subjection. The burden of proof, on the other hand, rested with the injured party, that is, the raped woman. It was she who had to prove that, firstly, she was honest and, secondly, she resisted and did not give her consent.

In the case of Maria Kopańska, proving the former was practically impossible. Two children born out of wedlock greatly undermined this fact in the eyes of the court. In the answers about her personal life, the woman found it important to note that she "had two children from one fiancé." This clarification, however, had little effect. Maria's profession did not add bonuses either. The service, which she pointed to as a way of maintaining herself, used to impose many stereotypes. In the eyes of the then society, such a work could potentially, sooner or later, lead to prostitution. For women, the link between earnings and their sexuality bordered on the constant risk of being suspected of body trade, making working women particularly vulnerable to violence. Anna Pavlyk, the sister of one of the leaders of the Ukrainian radical movement at that time, Mykhailo Pavlyk, a seamstress herself, wrote: "When futile and untrue news spreads too much, or when a female worker goes out of work, the poor one often finds it difficult even to cross the street because of assailants of different ages and positions, even those bound by knots of fidelity to other women. She refuses in vain; she is told straight in her face that she makes secrets in vain, because her way of life is already being trumpeted all over the world."

On the mental map of urban participants, women at night were, as a rule, the bearers of only one meaning — that of dishonest women. Working women could also be pushed into danger at night by their direct duties. Also in 1893, the Dziennik Polski reported the case of Mrs. M. from Przemyśl, who sent her maid to a pharmacy to get some medicine in the evening. The maid got caught on her way in a night police raid, aimed apparently at identifying unregistered prostitutes. The prescription and the maid's explanation did not work, so she spent the night at the police station.

Considering the witness's remark on the common faith, it remains only to suggest how Maria was able to identify this community, given, in particular, that "it was dark." Perhaps because of the language used by the attackers; the conclusion may also have been prompted by some characteristic details of their appearance that she was able to discern, or perhaps Maria's phrase was a spontaneously chosen attempt at an argument that could potentially help her. Whatever the motives in this particular case, the mention of faith may be explained by the public discourse around prostitution at that time. The problem of sex trafficking or, in the language of the time, "trade in living goods", was a hotly debated topic in the Galician press. The leitmotif of these publications was the often emphasized participation of Jews in the sex business organization. In addition, at the time of the crime against Maria, the city was still lively discussing one of the most notorious lawsuits in the province against an exposed network of traffickers, when 27 people were accused, 17 men and 10 women, all Jewish (the 1892 trial). The scale of anti-Jewish rhetoric raised by the topic and the associated wave of anti-Semitism caused particular concern to the city's Jewish community. It was one of the most active participants in the activities of the Lviv branch of the Austrian League for Combating Trafficking in Girls (ger. Österreichische Liga zur Bekämpfung des Mädchenhandels) created in the early 1900s.

Maria was right: all three men challenged in court and the fourth wanted one were Christians, two Roman Catholics and two Greek Catholics. They also shared another similarity as they all were working class. Among them were a shoemaker, a shoemaker's assistant, a locksmith and a furniture upholsterer. All of the defendants were 20 years old, unmarried, natives of Lviv, except for the 19-year-old Emil Bilo (who ran off), who was born in Chernivtsi. None of them pleaded guilty; instead they said they had been drunk and therefore might not remember certain details. It is no coincidence that the criminal chronicles included this story by the name of Emil Bilo who was wanted, despite the fact that he was not the only one accused of the crime. Such a favorable avoidance of the apparently unattractive fact in the biography is very much in line, for example, with the norm of non-disclosure of the secret of clients' names, to which, according to the then regulations on prostitution, prostitutes were obliged.

September 10, 1893 was Sunday. This was the only day of the week when Maria could have a day off, or have at least a free evening. Obviously, the schedule depended a lot on the place of work. Unfortunately the details do not reveal much. We know that Maria worked in the Zhovkivske suburb of Lviv at ul. Orzechowa 1/4 not far from the Pidzamche railway station (the street does not exist today). The job, or rather the financial loss of not being able to do it, was mentioned later. The woman counted 50 cents a day in compensation for her as she had lost 4 days due to rape-related illness. In addition to criminal liability for her offenders, Maria demanded compensation for these funds, as well as the payment of 50 rhenish guldens "for the pain suffered."

The negative outcome of the case for the complainant, among other things, could have been influenced by the very reason why Maria was returning home so late that night: a wedding. The urban sphere of entertainment, like, after all, any public sphere, was almost exclusively male-dominated and did not provide for women as independent subjects (at least in the status of "honest" ones). To become such subjects, they needed, at least, to be accompanied. In his diaries, for example, Teofil Hrushkevych, a Lviv resident, considered the need to accompany his youngest unmarried daughter Maria, then a postal worker, to be self-evident. He even had sometimes to come to the city from a neighboring town, where he worked at the time in order to accompany her to a theater performance. The girl, by the way, was 27 then.

In the case of Maria Kopańska, the woman's children also aroused the interest of the investigation, provoking very detailed clarifications. Among the proposals of the then labor market for women, the opportunity to work while having children seemed very unlikely. The only exception to this rule could be the positions of wet nurses. From the woman's explanations, it became clear that one of the two children had already died by that time, having lived only three weeks. Maria's clarifications about their common father did not develop a more detailed interest of the jury. Her calling him her "fiancé" was probably not accidental either. It was motivated by a desire to explain, in the eyes of the judges, the fact of extramarital pregnancies, her moral status.

Despite religious precepts and generally accepted public condemnation, the practice of cohabitation without marriage or the so-called "life on trust", it can be assumed, was not something extraordinary in the city. According to the protocols of premarital questionings of couples at the cathedral of St. George, pregnancy before marriage also happened from time to time. In the form of the questionnaire a separate column was provided for such a question with the instruction "to ask only if it is obvious that the woman is pregnant or there is a reliable rumor about it." The question itself read as follows: "Are you pregnant and does your fiancé know about it?".

Apparently, Maria's children belonged to the consistently large (as compared to rural) urban statistics of illegitimate children. According to the latter, for every 100 newborns, 37 were born out of wedlock in Lviv in 1893. In the second half of the 19th century, the percentage of illegitimate children in the Greek Catholic parishes of the cathedral of St. George and the church of St. Paraskeva tended to decrease: from a peak of 47.1% (St. George's cathedral) and 41.6% (St. Paraskeva's church) in the 1850s to 9% and 17.3 % respectively in 1901. Researchers are looking for explanations for this decrease. One of he reasons can be found in the fact that the parishes grew significantly in that time because of the migration from the surrounding villages. These people were from a more traditional culture with stricter marriage regulations. There was a noticeable decrease in the average marriage age and an increase in the number of early marriages. A more active use of various methods of birth control, probably, played its role too. Unfortunately, we do not know from the case file what specific religious affiliation of the woman was, except for the testimony of a witness about her Christian faith. However, we can say with certainty that children born out of wedlock had to be registered according to their mother's religion.

In order not to disturb the public with details, the trial was closed. Such a decision was usually motivated by the "things contrary to public morality" that were to be discussed there. No mention of this trial could be found in the local press either. Newspapers, usually interested in criminal stories, tended to avoid rape cases, guided, obviously, by the same motives as the court.

The jury trial, hearing Maria's case, was introduced into the Austrian trial in the wake of the " Spring of Nations " as an essential factor in the humanization of law. In order to become a member of a jury, it was necessary to meet the requirements of property, age and educational qualifications. Lists of jurors were compiled annually by administrative bodies, and the court selected the number of jurors required for each case. By the early 20th century, this socio-political judicial institution was criticized from time to time. The unpreparedness of the jury for the role assigned to them, their ignorance of the very foundations of law, and excessive emotionality in decision-making were listed among the main accusations against it. 

The 12 jurors who acquitted all defendants in the Maria Kopańska case were not unequivocal in their decision. At least three of the jurors in all three sentences voted for each defendant's guilt. Stanisław Julian Starzewski was found fully guilty by five jurors, while four agreed that he was guilty, but on condition that the words that the defendant did not allow Maria to resist were removed from the text of the indictment. Literally, in the original language, they did not agree with the following words: "po wprawieniu jej przez rzeczywiste zadania gwałtu w stan niemożności stawienia oporu" ("bringing her through the violence to the state of impossibility to resist"). The denial of these words, which essentially refuted the very fact of coercion, became decisive in the acquittal of Starzewski. According to the other three jurors, Starzewski was completely innocent. In the vote against the other two defendants (Michał Bendyk and Antoni Równy), the distribution of votes was more unanimous: of twelve jurors, 9 (in Bendyk's verdict) and 8 (in Równy's verdict) found them innocent.

1. Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv (CDIAL) 152/2/17053:32;
2. CDIAL 201/4а/3441 (Protocols of premarital questionnaires of the parishioners whose names start with A-B of St. George (Sv. Yura) church in Lviv with their birth registers, etc), V. 1, 102;
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