Marital Violence

This study connects the experience of domestic abuse to the historical development of family life from the Restoration until the passage of the Divorce Act 1857. A critical mass of examples drawn from a variety of sources, including 220 cases of separation or restitution from the London consistory court, peculiars of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Court of Arches, the High Court of Delegates, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council provides the empirical foundation for the discussion. Printed law reports from 1754–1855, cases reported in the London Times, and sixty-seven cases involving child or spousal custody heard by the King’s Bench between 1738 and 1800 extend the range of the study. The analysis of these materials adds substantially to our knowledge of domestic violence during the eighteenth century, bridging the gap between studies of the earlymodern period and those that focus on the Victorian period. In doing so, the book offers a revision of our understanding of the changing legal and cultural status of domestic violence, arguing that the increasing disapproval of a husband’s physical correction of his wife that James Hammerton (1) and Martin Weiner (2) placed in the later-nineteenth century actually developed much earlier.