ASSAULTS AGAINST WIVES: A PART OF THE ANCIENT LAW

The "law of marriage" was formalized by Romulus (who was credited with the founding of Rome in 753 BC) and required married women "as having no other refuge, to conform themselves entirely to the temper of their husbands and the husbands to rule their wives as necessary and inseparable possessions."

In the late 1400's, Friar Cherubino of Sienna, in his Rules of Marriage, operationalized the process by which a husband was to rule his wife recommending:

When you see your wife commit an offense, don't rush at her with insults and violent blows. Scold her sharply, bully and terrify her. And if this still doesn't work...take up a stick and beat her soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct the soul than to damage the soul and spare the body...Then readily beat her, not in rage but out of charity and concern for her soul, so that the beating will redound to your merit and her good.

In his extensive commentary on English Law, Sir William Blackstone explained the powers of authority given to husbands in legal, rather than moralistic terms. he noted:

"For as (the husband) is to answer for her misbehavior, the law thought it reasonable to in trust him with this power of chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children..."

Blackstone went on to reassure his readers that, "this power of correction was contained with reasonable bounds..," although the notation delineates some legalized "chastisements" that sound markedly more violent than contained, as when Blackstone observes:

The civil law gave the husband the same, or a larger, authority over his wife. allowing him for some misdemeanors, to beat his wife severely with scourges and cudgels...for others only moderate chastisement.

Even if a husband killed his wife, it was not considered a major offense. Yet for a wife to kill her husband was to kill her lord and master, and was an act comparable to treason. As Blackstone commented:

"Husband and wife, in the language of the law, are styled baron and deme...if the baron kills his deme it is the same as if he had killed a stranger, or any other person; but if the deme kills her baron, it is regarded by the laws as a much more atrocious crime, as she not only breaks through the restraints of humanity and conjugal affection, but throws off all subjection to the authority of her husband. And therefore the law denominates her crime a species of treason, and condemns her to the same punishment as if she had killed the king. And for every species of treason...the sentence of woman was to be drawn and burnt alive.

English common laws. as well as Blackstone's interpretation of them, greatly influenced the formation of laws in the United States. In 1824, the Mississippi Supreme Court, although specifying moderation and the application of force only in cases of "emergency," upheld the ancient principle of a man's right to physically assault his wife as judged appropriate by the man - and continued the court's assurance that the husband could so assault her without fear of prosecution or discredit. The court directed:

Let the husband be permitted to exercise the right of moderate chastisement, in cases of great emergency, and use salutary restraints in every case of misbehavior, without being subjected to vexatious prosecutions, resulting in the mutual discredit and shame of all parties concerned.

The reassurance of impunity from prosecution was reiterated in 1864 by a North Carolina court, ruling on a case in which a man had choked his wife. The court rules that,

...the law permits (a man) to use towards his wife such a degree of force, as is necessary to control an unruly temper, and make her behave herself; and unless some permanent injury be inflicted, or there be an excess of violence, or such a degree of cruelty as shows that it is inflicted to gratify his own bad passions, the law will n to invade the domestic forum, or go behind the curtain. It prefers to leave the parties to themselves, as the best mode of inducing them to make the matter up and live together as man an wife should.

In 1866, the actions a husband could legally take against his wife were amended, giving a man the right to beat his wife "with a stick as large as his finger but not larger than his thumb." This law was "created as an example of compassionate reform," since it modified the weapons a husband could use on his wife's person." Alabama became the first state to rescind a husband's legal right to beat his wife when, in 1871, the court declared:

The privilege, ancient though it be, to beat her with a stick, to pull her hair, choke her, spit in her face or kick her about the floor, or to inflict upon her like indignities, is not now acknowledged by out law...(T)he wife is entitled to the same protection of the law that the husband can invoke for himself...

A North Carolina court followed suit in 1874, but qualified its ruling by limiting the cases for which the court deemed legal interventions appropriate. The court advised:

If no permanent injury has been inflicted, nor malice, cruelty not dangerous violence shown by the husband, it is better to draw the curtain, shut out the public gaze, and leave the parties to forget and forgive.

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