Expanding the compass of domestic violence in the Hanoverian metropolis.
Smith, Greg T.
What goes on behind closed doors? This is a question that nosy neighbours and their academic cousins, historians, have been asking for
a very long time. Family historians among that lot have uncovered much
about family social and economic life, while studies of children and
childhood have similarly filled in much of the detail of normative
familial relations and behaviours. But in the past, as now, all was not
'happy families'. Greater attention to the situational context
of violence has led scholars to consider the various settings for the
exercise of interpersonal violence, and indeed historians have been able
to shed some light on the darker corners of the domestic sphere. As
historians of crime continue to explore the social meanings of the law,
we are learning more and more about the dynamics of everyday life in a
variety of socio-historical contexts. The result is that a more complex
and nuanced picture of life in all of its dramatic, complicated and
frequently disturbing multiplicity is beginning to emerge. This is
especially true when it comes to understanding the rough edges of daily
life. It is clear that in many contexts in the past, not least of which
the home, violence or the threat of violence--and by this I mean
physical violence to the person--as well as the emotional violence
caused by neglect, abandonment or deprivation, were all too common
features of daily life. Still, as Peter King noted in a 1996 article,
aside from the impressionistic conclusions that may be gained from the
work of a few articles there was yet "no detailed study of domestic
violence in eighteenth-century England." (1) Since that article, a
handful of useful studies have emerged. (2) Most recently, Joanne Bailey
and Elizabeth Foyster have each produced extended studies of the inner
dynamics of eighteenth-century families in which wife-beating is
explored in some detail, though little is said of abusive wives or of
the abuse of children or servants and so King's basic charge still
stands. (3)
Why is this so? There is still no shortage of contemporary interest
in domestic violence, battered wife syndrome, and increasing protections
for women and children caught in abusive relationships, and much of the
recent historical work borrows directly from contemporary sociological
and criminological theory. As well, a deeper understanding of the
dynamics of life in the micro-level of the family helps to flesh out the
character of life at the macro-level in eighteenth-century London more
generally. Through a closer examination of cases of domestic discord, we
may learn more about the relationships among violence, domination and
power in the past. But, of course, historians are driven by their
sources so it is reasonable to consider whether the familiar complaint
about the paucity of evidence of such behaviour will prevent us from
ever writing a complete history of domestic violence in the eighteenth
century. In this essay I want to further explore the degree of
'detectability' of domestic interpersonal violence by
re-examining some of the familiar and less familiar sources for the
study of such behaviour. More particularly, I ask to what extent it is
possible to 'detect' cases of domestic violence--including
wife beating, but also the abuse of children and the abuse of servants
and apprentices, two dimensions of domestic violence which have received
comparatively less attention--among the lower orders and the poor in the
late eighteenth century. Finally, I call attention to the discursive
frameworks that can emerge when particular acts of violence are brought
into the public sphere and dissected in the media, and explore some of
the consequences of such cases for the shaping of popular attitudes
towards violence in society.
Violence and the Courts
Historians have shown that from the medieval period serious,
systematic abuse of subordinates (especially wives or children) was both
condemned in law and abhorred in custom. (4) Still, there exists the gap
between customary condemnation and the taking of action that might leave
an historical trace. Patriarchal authority in the household, combined
with economic, social and legal barriers to prosecution conspired to
foreclose on potentially successful prosecutions before they even came
to public light. The fact that 'moderate physical correction'
of wives, children, servants or apprentices was permitted in law and
condoned in practice has of course contributed significantly to the
clandestine nature of such violence. Justicing manuals stated that a
charge of assault and battery would not be sustained in the case of a
parent chastising a child "in a reasonable and proper manner"
or "a master his servant being actually in his service at the time,
or a schoolmaster his scholar, or ... even a husband his wife." (5)
In his famous statement on marital cruelty in the 1790 case of Evans v.
Evans, Sir William Scott left room in the marriage home for
"occasional sallies of passion, if they do not threaten bodily
harm" which also left the degree of harm a subjective matter. (6)
This cultural tolerance for a certain amount of physical violence in the
domestic sphere makes it difficult to discover how widespread the
systematic abuse of subordinates was, as the definition of
'reasonable' violence was highly elastic. There were, as well,
considerable risks involved for the wife or servant or apprentice who
made private violence a public issue. Historians thus have good reason
to conclude that domestic violence was 'hidden' because of the
infrequency of its appearance in formal records. But while much of this
behaviour was concealed from official censure, a good many alleged
victims of violence brought their complaints before local authorities
where their cases were heard and recorded. For the metropolitan
experience, the most obvious sources to consider are, of course, the
records of criminal courts. Suits petitioning for separation from bed
and board and presented to the church courts have proved a rich and
detailed source for documenting the experiences of those who sought
separations on the grounds of adultery and cruelty. (7) Prosecutions for
assault provide another point of entry into the experiences of some who
claimed to be victims of physical violence. London's Old Bailey seems a likely place to seek out details of such experiences, but in
fact assault prosecutions before that court, from which cases of
domestic violence might be identified, were rare, as assault was a
misdemeanour offence and thus its prosecution fell under the
jurisdiction of the quarter sessions. Only the most serious forms of
assault such as stabbing or slitting the face or nose, violent acts
defined by statute, would be tried there. (8) The absence of more
mundane, domestic violence cases from the Old Bailey's regular
business diminishes the utility of the Old Bailey Sessions Paper for a
quantitative study of the metropolitan experience that I wish to
consider here. But the utility of the quarter sessions is also limited
by the fact that qualitative evidence for cases prosecuted at the London
sessions of the peace and Middlesex quarter sessions in the form of
depositions are virtually non-existent for the eighteenth century.
Identifying the familial or personal relationships between litigants in
assault cases is often impossible. Thus a rigorous, long-term
quantitative analysis of domestic violence using formal indictments, as
historians have performed for other offences, may not be possible.
But other evidence confirms that violence in the home or workplace
occurred frequently, and by expanding our range of sources beyond the
familiar court records it is possible to gain qualitative glimpses of
domestic violence and child abuse, even among the poorest, most
marginalized groups. One solution to this evidentiary problem is to
widen the source base to consider other courts and other sorts of
tribunals for settling disputes involving violence in the home or
workplace. First, the records of the court of King's Bench, for
example, contain rich, detailed accounts of alleged offences in the
depositions which survive from the early eighteenth century. Second, the
records of 'police' or 'magistrates' courts holding
the power of summary jurisdiction--that is trials without juries, held
before one or two magistrates or JPs--offer another untapped source. Yet
another strategy, and one I explore here, is to look beyond the courts
to investigate the nature of records of charitable institutions,
established with the needs and problems facing children or the poor
clearly in mind. Though the use of violence in the home was not the
preserve of the lower classes, evidence of domestic violence and the ill
treatment of children, servants and apprentices appears (if only
fitfully) in records generated by institutions designed specifically to
deal with such groups. When these sorts of records are considered
together with the existing court records we can begin to sketch the
outlines of the picture of violence in multiple spheres of life in the
eighteenth-century metropolis.
In the early modern period, the use of violence for the correction
and discipline of subordinates was not only at the core of disciplinary
practices, but was justified and even advocated by authorities and
commentators from all classes. Whipping, striking, beating or
caning--all variations of the same violent behaviour directed at the
body--were all accepted as methods of correction and discipline from the
work yard to the churchyard to the schoolyard. Hanoverian England was
characterized by a high degree of both public and private interpersonal
violence, and, more importantly, a general tolerance for such violence.
This broad tolerance for physical violence shaped contemporary reactions
to it in two important ways. First, deciding what constituted unusual or
unjustifiable violence--violence that was somehow excessive,
indiscriminate, immoderate and thus illegitimate--was highly contingent.
(9) Determining whether the violence was justified depended on the
particular circumstances in which the violence occurred. Second the
will, or need, or power of the victim to define the violence in
exceptional terms was also necessary in order to begin a case in law.
But the formal appeal to public authorities might figure only marginally
in the range of strategies taken to resolve disputes involving such
violent behaviour. All of these considerations affect the potential
creation of any record of violent acts in the past which might then
survive to the present.
Marital Violence
Historians interested in the issue of spousal violence in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have made good use of the full
accounts provided in the records of the church or 'consistory'
courts. The marriage disputes and appeals for separation that were
considered before the church courts often involved some degree of mental
or physical abuse, and details of such behaviour surfaced easily in the
sworn depositions of the litigants, even when violence or cruelty was
not the specific reason for one party to seek an end to the marriage.
The qualitative value of these records has been exploited by a number of
historians, but as Lawrence Stone pointed out litigants before the
Consistory Courts "were confined to the upper ranges of he middling
sort and above" while only the very wealthy could afford to pursue
their cases on appeal to the Court of Arches. (10) Recent work by Joanne
Bailey confirms this point, arguing that the high costs of prosecution
at the church courts (beyond the initiation of a suit) were a strong
deterrent to those with few means, particularly women. (11) This meant
that many women and the poor simply could not afford to pursue their
marital grievances in this court without the highly unlikely support of
strong financial backers. However, for many people, especially those of
few means, prosecuting a case to its procedural conclusion was neither a
financially practical nor a procedurally necessary course of action.
Moreover, in many cases of domestic violence, the motivations for
initiating a prosecution were complex, and a formal judgement and a
severe punishment of the offender were seen as but one potential outcome
to a formal complaint.
In the City of London, domestic violence was clearly a recurring
problem if the recorded cases of spousal violence appearing in the
City's magistrate's courts are any guide. The surviving rough
minute books from the Mansion House and Guildhall justice rooms, two
courts chaired by the lord mayor and aldermen respectively in their
alternate capacities as JPs, suggest that City magistrates confronted
the problem of domestic violence frequently, at times with an average of
2-3 cases surfacing each week, which they managed with a range of
tactics. (12) In other words, roughly two or three times each week, the
sitting magistrate was either issuing a warrant for an arrest based on a
domestic violence complaint, hearing and determining a case when the
parties were before him, or assessing a fine, issuing a peace bond
against one of the parties or binding over one of the parties with a
recognizance to keep the peace, or committing one or the other to gaol either as a punishment or to await trial. (13) Thus managing domestic
violence was a constant reality for the courts, but it is not as easy to
extrapolate from that fact whether domestic violence was a frequent
problem in society at large.
Many suits were initiated not with the intention of reaching a
judicial decision based on a jury verdict, but rather with the much more
limited desire to draw an external, authoritative voice into the dispute
in the hopes of realizing some kind of immediate result--in these cases
that usually meant bringing at least a temporary halt to the cycle of
violence. To achieve this more limited and short-term goal, it was not
necessary to bring a lengthy and expensive suit to the ecclesiastical
courts or even to the courts of quarter sessions, as that would involve
both time and money. Speedier justice could be found by taking
one's complaint to the local justice of the peace. JPs heard all
manner of complaints in their early stages, and those involving charges
of violence and abuse in the home were common.
In the eighteenth century, JPs were under strict formal constraints
when hearing complaints involving felonies. For example, when faced with
cases of serious, felonious assault such as maiming, the law provided
narrow direction to JPs in how to proceed. For misdemeanour offences,
however, those crimes deemed less serious and less of a threat to the
state and to social order, they were accorded much wider and ill-defined
discretionary authority. This was true for a broad range of violent
physical acts that fell under the category of 'assaults',
including domestic violence, and most other non-lethal crimes committed
against the person. This meant that the JP was accorded considerable
latitude in the management of interpersonal violence, and their power
and responsibilities continued to grow into the nineteenth century. (14)
Surviving diaries and minute books suggest that JPs deployed this power
when settling a wide range of interpersonal disputes involving violence.
JPs, who were often the first and only officials that victims sought to
involve in their complaint, were at liberty to broker a settlement, or
impose a punishment, or send the parties on to trial before a jury,
largely as he saw fit. (15) For many litigants, these flexible,
on-the-spot solutions to their domestic woes must have been all that
they wanted to gain from going to court while, for others, lacking the
means or will or courage to pursue the matter at law much further, it
was probably the best that they could expect.
Since the procedures in the initial stages of a complaint heard
before a magistrate were less formal, and less costly, those lacking the
resources to prosecute, often women and children--whose gender and age
militated against legal action at the superior courts--were perhaps able
to gain at least a cursory hearing in the more informal forum of the
JP's parlour room or the City of London's justice rooms. The
sitting magistrates' most common strategy when a case of domestic
violence was brought before him was to attempt to settle the matter on
the spot, a strategy followed by JPs at the City justice rooms in nearly
all manner of assault cases, but certainly in a high proportion of
domestic violence cases. Cases of domestic violence that appeared before
the City magistrates reveal the extent to which the court operated as a
court of equity, where general principles of fairness frequently
outweighed strict interpretations of the law. Metropolitan magistrates
in their courts, and likely those in many other parts of the country as
well, were willing to use their power and influence to encourage what
they envisioned as fair and practical settlements. In some cases a
simple cooling off period was deemed in order. In other cases, the
magistrates can be found constructing maintenance agreements to be
followed by the two parties. Take, for example, the case of Sarah
Rottam's husband Thomas whom she charged in 1761 with a violent
assault and with "running away and leaving her whereby she is
likely to become chargeable"--in other words, a financial burden on
the parish. To prevent this, the justice (Mr. Alexander, a London
alderman) initiated some kind of discussion which resulted in the
husband agreeing to pay Sarah an allowance of 3s. 6d. per week "to
which she was contented" and he was discharged. Similarly, in the
case of Alexander English we find that his wife's assault charge
was dismissed by the magistrate on their agreement to separate and on
his promise to "allow her 5s a week." Ann Hands, having
charged her husband William with "assaulting and beating her"
asked the court if she might "live seperate and have an
allowance" of 7s per week, to which William consented. When Jane
Wittick brought her husband before Mr. Alderman Boy dell in October 1789
on assault charges, presumably for behaviour that extended over some
time, the clerk noted that articles of separation were "agreed on,
executed, and [the] prisoner was discharged." Such cases are
unmistakable examples of court officials finding a way to curb the
violence, to separate the parties, and to prevent the wife from becoming
a financial burden upon her parish neighbours by arranging for something
approximating modern separation agreements and maintenance payments.
(16)
But without formal guidelines or legislation against domestic
violence, similar sorts of cases could produce contradictory outcomes.
When Judith Abrahams charged her husband Abraham with assault for
"frequently assaulting beating abusing and threatening her"
the magistrate was satisfied "ye Woman was in danger" and
Abraham was committed to Wood Street Compter to await trial. (17)
Contrast this with the experience of Ann Ford who had her husband
Thurston brought before the City magistrates on a warrant for having
"on various occasions threatened to kill her" and provided two
witnesses including a former servant to help make her case. But the
justice sided with the husband who brought his uncle to testify on his
behalf, and who "gave the Defendant a good Character." The JP
concluded that although Thurston "was hasty" he had "not
struck her lately" and so he was discharged. (18) The same was true
when Ann Woodcock brought charges against her husband "for
threatening her Life." When her husband "promised
Amendment" the case was discharged. (19) By contrast, the Surrey
justice Richard Wyatt committed George King to the House of Correction in February 1771 for one of "several" violent assaults and
beatings upon his wife Ann. He too had "sworn to kill her"
though in this case the threat seems to have struck the JP as real, and
may have been the factor that swayed him to see in this case rather more
than over-zealous domestic correction. To Wyatt's mind, George King
had crossed the line. (20) But whereas in the first two examples the
matter did not proceed to a formal jury trial before the quarter
sessions, in King's case the record notes that he was committed to
the House of Correction. Whether that was to await trial or as a
punishment, however, is unspecified. What is clear is that these JPs
were perfectly content to exercise the wide discretion accorded to them
to construct punishments and enforce their own normative constructions
of marriage, drawn from their own middling or elite experiences. One
consequence of such examples of the daily exercise of discretionary
power was to keep many cases of intimate and domestic violence out of
the notice of the superior courts and the perpetrators out of the
purview of judges who held the power to punish such violence with
greater severity.
The criteria by which these JPs judged a case of domestic violence
'trifling' and worthy of being dismissed or, conversely,
worthy of punishment or committal for jury trial are never clearly
spelled out. Some recorded entries, such as that of Samuel
Alchorn's summary examination on a charge of assaulting and beating
his wife, note that the claim was "Adjudged true" and Samuel,
unable to make bail, was committed to the Wood Street Compter (a London
gaol) to await trial. (21) But the very brief details found in the
records allow us only to speculate on the motivations behind their other
summary decisions. At least two cases suggest that perhaps normative
notions of male honour informed the JPs in their judgments about how to
manage violence in the family. In one rather more unusual case from 1790
where Elizabeth Carrington's unnamed brother took the trouble of
charging her with "abusing him" no reason is given why the
matter was settled and discharged. (22) In another case from December
1775 in which a husband charged his wife with "violently assaulting
him" the magistrate Sir Thomas Halifax (the future Lord Mayor)
dismissed the charge on the basis of a constable's oath "that
the Surgeon had declared [the husband] to be out of danger." (23)
That a surgeon was even consulted coupled with the implication that the
man was previously 'in' danger hints at tantalizing details
about the degree of violence used in the attack that are now
irretrievable. Halifax certainly heard and knew more than the brief
record of the case lets on, but still he dismissed the charge. Perhaps
Halifax was trying to save the husband's honour and reputation,
since being the victim of an abusive wife (as his wife's conviction
would have publicly confirmed), would do little to underscore his
ability to control a disorderly household and disobedient wife. As
Elizabeth Foyster has pointed out, when household order broke down, the
"spotlight of responsibility" fell on the male head of the
house. (24) Thus even if serious violence was used in the attack, it
might be acceptable in some circumstances to find ways to excuse the
violence in order to reconfirm more powerful social codes of normative,
masculine behaviour. Cases of assault between husbands and wives that
proceeded on to a formal trial before a judge and jury at the quarter
sessions were apparently few in number. This claim is based on an
analysis of the indictments in which the formal charge of assault was
laid. As with the magistrates' rough notebooks, these more formal
records might indicate a relationship between the parties by adding
'her husband' 'his wife' or the shortened Latin
'Ux' (for uxor: wife) to the otherwise formulaic language
required of these documents but whether this was done invariably is hard
to say. Although assault prosecutions formed the second biggest
proportion of crimes prosecuted at the quarter session courts, behind
theft, of a sample of roughly 1800 indicted cases of assault, attempted
murder, and murder drawn from the London Sessions of the Peace and Gaol
Delivery in the period 1760-1833, only 74 clear cases of domestic
violence could be identified. (25) Two of those cases involved the
murder of a wife by a husband; another constituted an attempted murder.
(26) All three husbands in those cases were sentenced to death. Of the
remaining 71 assault charges, 68 were laid against abusive husbands and
3 against abusive wives, two of whom were acquitted while the third
woman was fined 1s and committed to gaol until she paid up.
As mentioned before, there is little qualitative evidence among the
records of the London or Middlesex quarter sessions to rely on in order
to explore the underlying causes of these violent episodes. However,
verdicts and punishments were recorded with near perfect regularity and
provide the data in Table 1. The results suggest that although the total
number of convictions for wife-assault remained constant at
approximately one per year in each decade, there was a slight shift in
actual sentences consistent with parallel trends in sentencing for all
assault cases from the 1780s on. The punishments for the 36 husbands who
were found guilty or pleaded guilty ranged from minor fines of 1s in 16%
of the cases (6 / 36); fines plus the requirement that the husband enter
into a recognizance or find sureties for his good behaviour for one or
more years in 42% of the cases (15 / 36); and a sentence of some period
of imprisonment, often in conjunction with a fine and/or a recognizance
to keep the peace in 36% (13 / 36) of the cases. Granted these are small
absolute numbers, but given that we know that magistrates tried to
filter out as many of these sorts of cases as possible at the summary
stage, the cases that did proceed to trial are more likely to have
involved more serious violence or to have been presented as the tip of
the iceberg, indicative of a pattern of abuse. (27) The harsher
sentences of imprisonment and the recognizances to keep the peace (in
hefty sums ranging from [pounds sterling]20 to [pounds sterling]100)
suggest a real attempt by the courts in some instances to crack down on
such violence and to try to impose exemplary punishments. At the very
least, we learn that the husband's freedom to employ violence in
the name of correction was bound by some limits.
In these particular records of indictments at quarter sessions,
with clear cases of spousal violence being so thin in number, it is
difficult to construct a sound quantitative analysis of changing penal
responses to this violence over time. However, other evidence of changes
in attitudes towards interpersonal violence more broadly suggest that
judges and juries were moving towards harsher punishments and were
recommending both stricter and what might have been seen as more
effective punishments. This is evident in the prosecution and punishment
of assault both in the metropolis and in the counties. (28)
The use of the sureties and recognizances to keep the peace are
particularly telling as penal options as they both signified the
official opprobrium against the offence, and also defined a place for
the community to play a role in disciplining and controlling the violent
offender. Recognizances thus answered three legal and social demands:
first, they addressed a public desire for justice and for the state to
use its power to restrict violence, without the considerable cost and
burden of custodial sentences. Second, recognizances offered the courts
a way to retreat from what Blackstone identified as the 'dangerous
practice' of allowing litigants to broker private settlements in
cases of assault. The state, he argued, did in fact have an interest in
the prosecution of interpersonal violence, and in such cases "the
right of punishing belongs not to any one individual in particular, but
to the society in general, or the sovereign who represents that
society." (29) It was the public interest that was most threatened
by the casual punishment of violent behaviour characteristic of the
private settlement. Third, by binding two other guarantors to ensure the
offender's future good behaviour, this penal option incorporated an
element of restorative justice where the offender was reintegrated but
at the same time policed by his local community. The recognizance, then,
straddled both the public and private interests in the punishment of
domestic violence.
Abuse of children
How widespread and how acceptable was the use of violence against
children? It seems clear from contemporary pamphlet and conduct
literature that the use of physical force in the correction and
disciplining of children was deemed acceptable under certain
circumstances. Even if they exaggerated their experiences to paint a
particular picture of the past for their own rhetorical purposes,
contemporary authors such as James Boswell and Francis Place nevertheless pointed to physical correction of children as an example of
the standard and accepted means for instructing and controlling the
young. Johnson, noted Boswell, "upon all occasions, expressed his
approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod." (30)
Place related how his father regularly beat him and his brother, often
with a stick, for the most trifling transgressions, claiming "I
scarcely ever recollect his ceasing to strike until the stick was
broken." Place recalled his beatings as characteristic of the style
of discipline-making in his younger days. (31) The rule book for the
Academy in Soho Square, a London grammar school, advised the penalty of
whipping for those found guilty of 'capital' offences, which
included: lying, theft, rebellion swearing or cursing, striking in
schools, and being the aggressor in a quarrel out of schools. (32) But
the author of one guide for parents advised that children were best
controlled by encouraging in them "a sense of the true love they
bear them" so that "they will often be fearful of offending
those they love." Such methods, he continues, were "far more
durable than that which proceeds from the fear of a rod and
punishment" yet he concedes that such "correction may
sometimes be made use of" so long as it "be performed with a
great deal of discretion, and ... without anger or passion." In the
main, though, the advice is that "children should seldom be
corrected by blows." (33)
I've mentioned the wide latitude the law granted when it came
to controlling and disciplining subordinates by use of physical force.
But when did discipline cross over into abuse? The unprovoked or
habitual ill treatment of children struck many in the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries as a cruel and unacceptable use of power, and
cases of serious abuse did not go entirely unheeded. What is difficult
to ascertain is how serious the mistreatment of children had to be
before the law became involved, and how often parents were made to
account for this behaviour. Newspaper accounts occasionally offer some
insights into contemporary attitudes. A case from 1810 reported in the
Times indicates that the threshold of toleration for violence against
children was indeed high, the tipping point coming when the violence
threatened to cause death. In this case, a woman named Boyce was
examined at Union Hall (the Southwark Police Office), charged with
"having beaten her daughter, of eight years of age, so cruelly as
to endanger her life." The report continues, "the child is now
in St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the woman was committed until the
state of the infant is determined." Later the same year, the Times
reported how Mary Fleshman was brought before the quarter sessions at
Devon and tried "for having cruelly beaten her infant child, of
four years old; she was found guilty and sentenced to three months
imprisonment." (34) In both of these cases abusive mothers were
called to account for the abuse of their young daughters suggesting that
the mistreatment of girls might have struck a deeper chord with the
authorities and with society. The fact that all ten of the cases of
assault from my London sample in which children were defendants involved
female victims, lends some further weight to the theory that it was
somewhat more acceptable to strike boys.
One can find similar cases in which parents, guardians or other
family members were prosecuted and sometimes punished for their
excessively harsh treatment of children among the court records, but
only rarely. (35) The summary court records offer few cases involving
possible violence against children, as when Thomas Hanstead charged Mary
Bumall "for striking his Niece". We might surmise that the
niece was a child given that Hanstead is making the charge on her
behalf, and that she is identified specifically by her subordinate
familial relationship, but whether a small child, teen or adult is not
specified. (36) Quarter sessions prosecutions record occasional
incidents of child abuse. When George Bundy was brought before the
Middlesex quarter sessions in April 1805, having allegedly thrown his
daughter Mary into the fire, he received the rather stiff sentence of
two years imprisonment in the House of Correction. But even when charges
of violence committed against children were successfully laid,
punishments could be mitigated, sending a mixed message. For example,
Margaret Goodman was tried and convicted in 1796 for "violently
assaulting and beating" her thirteen-year-old nephew and also
received two years imprisonment in the House of Correction. Yet the
following year, she sought and received a remission of the remaining
eight months of her sentence from the Home Secretary. (37)
Sources that might reveal the extent to which children of different
classes were the objects of violence are very difficult to find. The
cruelty meted out to elite wives might be noted during the divorce
proceedings available to members of such classes, but evidence of child
abuse might surface in those cases only as an incidental detail. It is
even more difficult to uncover evidence of the short and violent lives
of London's poorest and most vulnerable. The very poor were
unlikely to go to court as prosecutors except in the most extreme
circumstances; thus, detecting attitudes towards domestic violence at
that social level must be teased out from indirect sources, such as
those where the life circumstances of the poor might have been recorded
for other purposes. One example is the records of charitable
institutions such as the Philanthropic Society, which opened in 1788 to
deal with poor and potentially criminal children. The registers of those
children admitted to the Society's care offer brief glimpses into
the shocking circumstances of their young lives and suggest that for
many desperately poor children on the margins of society, emotional and
physical cruelty accompanied by neglect, was not uncommon. And though
not always articulated in modem terms, it was clear that contemporaries
understood the connections between poverty, abuse and criminality.
Indeed the Society was founded on the belief that the children it was
targeting were likely to turn to or continue their life of crime if they
did not intervene.
Many of the admitted children were neglected, "turned out of
doors" or found "deserted" and living as vagrants. James
Field, aged 12, was "found in the streets naked and almost
starved." (38) Fifteen-year-old Mary Crawley, admitted in 1789, was
said to have been "cruelly treated, almost starved, and turned into
the Streets by a Brutal Father in law." (39) Thomas Pearce's
father was described as "a violent and drunken man." (40)
David Neal, an eight-year-old boy, was described as the son of a
"vagrant mother [who] had beat him and left him almost for dead at
Hammersmith" before he was taken in and "adopted" by a
Waterman. (41) When the nine-year-old Mary Smith was admitted in
December 1792, a touching glimpse into her life was noted in the
register. Presumably orphaned, the girl was under the control of an
unnamed caretaker who "found it necessary to correct her."
When he died and shortly before his burial, the young girl took the
opportunity "of getting into the room and uncovered the sheet and
spoke to the corpse in these terms: 'I don't mind you, you
can't hurt me now.'" (42) John Birkett, an
eleven-year-old boy admitted in November 1792, had lost his mother, his
father was a "man of profligate character" and young John had
been apprenticed to a shoemaker whom he had deserted "on account of
severe usage" and was now wandering London's streets as a
vagrant. (43) Even from these very brief accounts we gain some sense of
the lived experience of violence and neglect that overshadowed their
young lives. These children were able to escape the violence in their
lives by the intervention of a charity. Other children were not so
fortunate.
It may be the case that these micro-biographies were constructed
for the benefit of the authorities of the charity, to increase the
chances of admission to the Society and we might be cautious of the
desire to 'play up' the abuse in order to increase their
chances of admission. However the evidence comes from the admission
registers created after the children had been accepted and thus the
notes seem to have been used merely as a brief background history for
internal administrative purposes. One could also argue that even if
these life narratives were overdetermined, the administrators still were
using the language that struck the right note and highlighted the
broader cultural revulsion to brutality and ill treatment even of those
poor children whom middle-class observers might assume experienced such
treatment as a matter of course.
Though examples of such abuse appear infrequently among the
surviving court records, we should not conclude from the court records
alone that the mistreatment of children was rare. Other examples of the
harsh treatment of certain children in this period, especially among the
poor, are better documented. The abuse of chimney sweeps, for example,
singled out as a particularly inhumane example of exploitative child
labour attracted the attention of the authorities in the early
nineteenth century. (44)
One indication that by the early nineteenth century the abuse of
children was drawing wide public opprobrium comes from a case which was
noted in both the Times and then appeared in a broadsheet printed in
June, 1834. (45) It relates how one Spitalfields neighbourhood "was
suddenly thrown into considerable excitement and confusion"
following the discovery of girl named Margaret Crane who had been
"forcibly confined in a cole-hole, in a state of nudity and
destitution." When the parish officials were notified, the mother
and the girl were seized and immediately brought before the magistrates
at the Worship Street Police Office, "followed by some hundreds of
people, who were with difficulty prevented from tearing the old woman to
pieces." In his defence, the girl's father claimed that his
daughter was insane and had "several times, when her hands were
free, taken up a knife and attempted to stab" him and his wife.
Nevertheless, the parents were deemed by the magistrates to have been
entirely capable of properly caring for the child. Thus, on account of
their abrogation of their parental duties, and for "exercising
great brutality" towards the girl, they were both committed to
prison to await trial, and the girl was taken to the workhouse.
Mistreatment of Apprentices and Servants
Servants, apprentices and other labourers who moved in and out of
the domestic sphere could and did suffer the physical violence of
masters and mistresses, and not just in middle and upper class houses.
(46) Even relatively poor families had domestic help, though often these
were no more than parish orphans who were bound out for very little
money as apprentices to "housewifery." (47) Regardless of
their class, the use of physical violence by masters or mistresses
against non-blood relations in the home or workplace, which in many
instances was the same physical space, was not uncommon. The
mistreatment and even systematic abuse of domestic servants and
apprentices was a matter that came to the attention of the public and
the authorities from time to time, though again the sparse evidence of
such household violence permits only tentative conclusions. (48)
One eighteenth-century legal treatise advised that a master was
permitted by law to correct and punish his servant "in a reasonable
Manner for abusive Language, Neglect of Duty or other Misbehaviour, so
it be done with Moderation," a point echoed in contemporary justice
manuals as it had been in legal and didactic literature from the
seventeenth century. (49) The courts were known to uphold this exercise
of power too. In one assault prosecution involving a baker's
servant and his master, the court excused the "violent beating and
abusing" of the servant for "neglecting ye Business."
(50) In London, formal complaints by apprentices about their masters
could be made to the City Chamberlain's Court. Although the reasons
for bringing a complaint before the Chamberlain moved beyond physical
abuse, it is clear that physical violence erupted in the course of a
number of disputes between masters and servants. One servant claimed he
had been ill treated, kicked and injured by his master, "by which
he had a rupture." James Ingram alleged that his master had beaten
him with a cane about the head and arms "immoderately". His
master for his part defended his actions as Ingram had behaved, he said,
"in an insolent and abusive manner" especially toward the
master's wife. Similarly, James Molding argued that when his lazy
apprentice failed to complete a pressing work order he "was
aggravated from his insolence to strike him" with a hammer,
"knocking him down." (51) The Chamberlain in these cases
simply admonished the parties and dismissed their complaints, as he did
in several other cases. Punishments seem to have been reserved generally
for non- violent transgressions: going out without leave, taking tools
out of the workshop, or coming home late and drunk. (52) Apprentices who
used violence against their masters were taking a considerable risk in
challenging the power relationship, and authorities were more likely to
censure such violence against superiors. Thus James Griffin who was
charged with being drunk and throwing his tools at this master was
committed to the Bridewell for one month. (53) But the brief details
contained in these records suggest that the use of violence by masters
as a means of coercion and discipline was largely justified, which seems
to confirm one historian's assumption that much violence against
servants and apprentices "was passed off as 'moderate'
correction" and that some resulting deaths were attributed to
natural causes. (54) For even if the servant died as a result of
"immoderate or unreasonable" correction, the law held that
although the master was guilty of murder, consideration could be made
"of the Manner of the Provocation, the Danger of the Instrument,
which the Master useth, and the Age or Condition of the Servant, that is
stricken" so that the death penalty might be avoided. (55) Masters,
then, could and did presume a rather wide authority in their methods of
controlling subordinates while at the same time implicitly reinforcing
the power relationship which sanctioned such violence.
The masters in the foregoing examples escaped punishment for their
violent behaviour, but apprentices and servants were occasionally
successful in their complaints too. One newspaper reported that an
apprentice girl was discharged "from her master, a soldier, for
beating and other ill usage." (56) City JPs were made aware of
problems with abusive masters in their summary hearings while the
Middlesex quarter sessions records contain a few cases of appeals from
apprentices and servants seeking release from their remaining
obligations of apprenticeship. (57) In 1759, Elizabeth Sudds, servant to
a grazier named Anthony Cross, petitioned the court for her release from
service. She had been subjected to terrible abuse from both Anthony and
his wife. Sudds stated that they began to beat her almost as soon as she
came into their service, subjecting her to a particularly brutal beating
where she was stripped naked, and "barbarously and most inhumanly
whipt and cut ... with a Horsewhip ... over most parts of her Body for a
considerable time." The explicit violence, along with the implied
sexual overtones of the case ensured Sudds was granted an absolute
discharge from her apprenticeship bond by the court. (58)
Peter Kearnan, a twelve-year-old boy apprenticed to George
Freeland, a stationer, complained in February 1788 that Freeland and his
wife had "frequently beat and ill used [him] without any reason or
cause." On one occasion, Mrs. Freeland beat Kearnan with a brass
ruler and tried to spear him with a hot poker when he intervened in a
dispute between Mrs. Freeland and her drunk and abusive husband. George
Freeland also abused Kearnan, whipping him with a thick rope for
"refusing to eat stinking meat and Musty bread" and on another
occasion "refusing to eat of a stinking Shoulder of Mutton in which
there were Maggots." The court granted Kearnan an absolute
discharge from his apprenticeship and further ordered Freeland to repay
the twenty pound apprentice fee received from Kearnan's father.
(59)
Husbands and masters did not own a monopoly on domestic violence:
wives and mistresses could terrorize their households with violent
outbursts too. The Surrey JP Richard Wyatt made note of the claims of
Sarah Hopkins a servant to John Harcourt of Egham, who witnessed the
regular abuse by Harcourt's wife of "the other servants of the
family" and who suffered the same treatment herself Other servants
confirmed her story. (60) Details from another abusive situation appear
in a deposition for an assault case that came before the court of
King's Bench in 1798. The document states that Sarah Kingsworth, a
London servant, carelessly left a milk delivery in a spot where the
household cat was able to help herself. When the lady of the house, Mary
Black, discovered the oversight she "threw herself into a violent
rage and not only very much abused this deponent by calling her
approbrious names but violently assaulted her by thrusting a candle and
Candlestick in her face." According to Kingsworth, her employer
then "violently jammed [her] Arm between the door of a large
folding press ... so as to render her Arm totally useless ... and so
much bruised ... lamed disabled and hurt that [she] expected she should
be obliged to have her arm amputated." (61)
The well known case of Elizabeth Brownrigg is among the most
notorious and extreme examples from the eighteenth century of the severe
treatment meted out to servants, especially by a woman. The case
generated considerable popular interest, including from the press. (62)
An examination of the popular response to the case suggests the
framework of attitudes towards extreme cruelty and systematic abuse,
apparent in the mid-eighteenth century.
Brownrigg, the wife of a house painter and a mother of sixteen
children, was a midwife who was appointed by the overseers of the parish
of St. Dunstin in the West to take in pregnant women and also to accept
young orphan girls from the London Foundling Hospital to apprentice with
her as midwives. In 1765 she received Mary Mitchell and Mary Jones, both
aged 14, as apprentices. At first she treated them well, but soon
Brownrigg, along with her husband and one of her three surviving sons,
began abusing the girls horribly. They were starved, beaten, confined
under stairs or under a dresser, and had water thrown upon them. In one
instance, Mary Jones was whipped with such force that Mrs. Brownrigg had
to relent, having tired herself out. (63) Jones eventually fled the
house and returned to the Foundling Hospital. Upon relating her story to
the Hospital's Governors, their solicitor was ordered to write to
James Brownrigg "and acquaint him, that if he does not forthwith make satisfaction for the abuse to the said child, this corporation will
prosecute him with the utmost severity." (64) Instead, Brownrigg
was called before the Lord Chamberlain's court and Jones was
discharged from her apprenticeship. (65)
Mary Mitchell suffered alone for a time until another girl named
Mary Clifford, about seventeen years old, was taken in and was soon
subjected to similar abuse. On a number of occasions, Clifford was
stripped naked, suspended from a beam and whipped until she bled. This
continued for some time until her stepmother came to London to call on
her. John Brownrigg denied having Mary in his apprentice and threatened
to take her before the Lord Mayor for pressing the matter. But upon
hearing "high words" between the two as the stepmother was
sent away, a neighbour called her in and informed her that she and her
family "had frequently heard groans and moanings" issue from
Brownrigg's house, and that she suspected "there were
apprentices who were cruelly treated." (66) Once the parish
officials were informed, a search of the house was ordered whereupon
Mary Mitchell was discovered and later Mary Clifford who was confined in
a cupboard. The girls were taken to St. Bartholomew's hospital
where Mary Clifford died. Mr. Brownrigg was arrested at the time of the
girls' discovery, but Mrs. Brownrigg and her son managed to escape.
Eventually they were apprehended in Wandsworth and returned to London to
stand trial on 12 September 1767, for murder. (67)
Newspaper accounts of Brownrigg's arrest and trial were quick
to demonize her, underscoring popular disgust with her violent treatment
of her female servants. Although one newspaper condemned the
"shocking and unchristian" behavior of the mob, citing calls
by some for her damnation rather than salvation, and from others
"that they hoped she would go to Hell and were sure the Devil would
fetch her soul," (68) many other discursive representations of the
opprobrium directed toward her by the spectators were laudatory. The
"hisses and hallooing" of the small crowd, first on her
transfer from the Poultry Compter to Newgate Prison to await her trial
and later on her way to the Tyburn's "fatal tree" were
interpreted as signs of their ultimate humanity. (69) Indeed, according
to one account, their censure and ridicule of Brownrigg "testified
[to] their detestation of her cruelty." (70) Word of Elizabeth
Brownrigg's conviction on the murder charge elicited a shout of joy
from the crowd assembled outside the Old Bailey awaiting the verdict.
(71) Her husband and son were acquitted of murder, but convicted on a
misdemeanour for which they were sentenced to six month's
imprisonment while Elizabeth was sentenced to death. Following her
execution at Tyburn on 14 September 1767, Brownrigg's body was
returned to Surgeons Hall in the Old Bailey where it was anatomized and,
as the Gentleman's Magazine noted, her skeleton was later displayed
in a niche "opposite the first door in the surgeons Theatre, that
the heinousness of her cruelty may make the more lasting impression on
the minds of the spectators." (72) Even government and judicial
officials, it seems, saw in the Brownrigg case something of a high
watermark in violence and cruelty, and her posthumous presence in one of
London's busiest courts was meant to remind observers of her crime,
while invoking reflection on the boundaries between acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour in eighteenth century society.
The Brownrigg case, which occasioned a wide public response with
numerous pamphlets, broadsides and newspaper accounts appearing in its
wake, also had both practical and epistemological consequences. Though
none condoned the actions of Brownrigg, the case raised the difficult
question of where exactly the threshold of intolerance for the treatment
of subordinates might lie in the mid eighteenth century. It also sparked
a discussion of the suitable punishment for such cruelty with the
predictable cries for an exemplary punishment and changes in the law.
(73) Though no legislative action followed, there were suggestions from
the public that local officials should become more involved in the
policing of the conditions of apprenticeship, with one correspondent to
the London Evening Post suggesting a new system by which all child
apprentices be brought before the parish vestries "and there
examined about the Treatment they receive, their Masters or Mistresses
not being present." (74) As a direct consequence of the case it was
reported in several daily newspapers that the Foundling Hospital would
in future require tradesmen who took on child apprentices from that
institution to "give security for the good usage of such child
during the servitude" and suggested further that other parish
authorities were thinking of following suit. (75) By the early
nineteenth century, some officials were taking cases of acute abuse of
servants seriously. In February 1803, Ann Brown was charged with
assaulting her eleven-year-old apprentice to pin-head making, Ann
Harris, with the prosecution brought by the overseers of Bishopsgate
parish. (76)
Elizabeth Brownrigg's name became synonymous with cruelty and
severity in the eighteenth century, and female cruelty in particular.
Indeed, the discursive responses to her crimes in the pamphlet
literature and in the press provide much insight into contemporary
attitudes towards such violence in the control and domination of
subordinates. The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser reported how the
"inhumanity of the painter's wife" was "at present a
general topic of conversation." (77) She was alternately portrayed
as a bawd or a witch, while other portraits played off of her career as
midwife, accusing her outright of infanticide. (78) What prompted the
attacks or explained her actions, however, is never explored. Eighteenth
century commentators were unconcerned with, or unable to conceptualize,
the psychology or pathology of the crimes. Most were content to see her
as simply an incarnation of evil. But the cruel treatment of her
apprentice girls did elicit very strong reaction, signaling a more
widespread disgust for such extreme violence. One commentator in a
letter to the Gentleman's Magazine explained how he was
"filled with astonishment and sorrow that there should exist among
the human species, a wretch, who instead of nourishing and shewing [sic]
kindness to these destitute innocents, could, with a heart steeled
against every tender and human sentiment, thus gratify her diabolical
appetite, in cruelly and wantonly tormenting them." (79) Pamphlet
accounts of the case which appeared around the time of the trial, and
the newspaper advertisements for them placed in newspapers and
magazines, used similar language to categorize the case and to position
the violence that it exemplified. An Appeal to Humanity was one such
tract, recounting the "cruel actions" of Brownrigg and the
whole "barbarous transaction". (80) Two days following her
trial and conviction, the Public Advertiser advertised the sale of John
Wingrave's Narrative of the Many Horrid Cruelties Inflicted by
Eliz. Brownrigg. (81) Two other advertisements, one for An Authentic
Account of the Life Trial and Execution of Elizabeth Brownrigg and the
other for the Genuine Authentic Account of the Life and Transactions of
Elizabeth Brownrigg boasted that their accounts included copperplate images, the latter "representing the scene of barbarity." (82)
Despite the lack of precision in the law for what might constitute
immoderate correction, the Brownrigg case re-traced the boundaries of
toleration for the use of violence to correct and control subordinates.
Her conviction and condemnation reminded the public that the power of a
master or mistresses to assault and abuse their employees was not
absolute. While the discursive response permitted a brief flurry of
ironic, self-righteous moralizing and editorializing on the part of
those newspaper writers and pamphleteers who nonetheless sought to turn
a quick profit by relating the "authentic" details of a
particularly unusual case of violence in the domestic sphere.
Cases of both eighteenth-century master/apprentice violence and the
abuse of servants can reveal a number of attitudes towards violence in
social relationships. First, they indicate the boundaries of acceptable
violence within non-blood relationships. Barbara Hanawalt has suggested
that in medieval England, servants were more likely to suffer abuse than
apprentices due to the closer personal relationships forged between
masters and apprentices. Servants were seen as slightly removed from the
obligations of training and mentorship that brought apprentices into the
family fold, and thus their ill treatment was more akin to family
violence than to a case of correction of a recalcitrant and subservient employee. (83) In the eighteenth century, as we have seen, both
apprentices and servants could be (and clearly were) corrected, but when
the contractual elements of the apprenticeship bond were contravened, or
when correction of either servants or apprentices shaded into cruelty,
negligent masters could be held to account. Both sorts of cases moved
judges and juries to look into areas of abuse of power within the
apprenticeship or service contract and to reassess attitudes about
parenthood--at least surrogate parenthood--control, and violence. Cases
of abusive masters raised concerns about violence in the home or
workplace, and challenged established notions of "civility"
and "morality" since, at the time, many still considered
apprenticeship the principal method of teaching not only a trade but
proper conduct and manners. But they also spoke to matters concerning
breach of contract, because the actions and responsibility of each party
are laid out in the indentures. Though recalcitrant apprentices were
subject to the discipline of their masters, their neglect and abuse were
prohibited. Thomas Haskell has argued that one of the marks of
capitalism that provided the preconditions for a rise in humanitarianism was the inculcation of the contractual relationship or promise keeping
as a basis of trust in society. (84) The abuse of apprentices might be
seen, then, as an example of breach of contract, thus a breach of trust,
which "civilized" authorities such as judges, magistrates, and
juries, anxious perhaps to expound humanitarian sentiments might well
seek to condemn with greater force. This was certainly a key element
underpinning the public reaction to the Brownrigg case.
The examples of domestic and workplace violence examined here
remind us that the abuse of children and youth has particular historical
dimensions and that fragmentary evidence can expose aspects of domestic
violence as they unfolded in the private sphere that are all too often
concealed from the historian's view. More significantly, though, we
also gain some sense of public tolerance or intolerance for such
violence, and can begin to establish some thresholds of acceptability
for these forms of violent behaviour in the past. That abusive husbands,
wives, mothers or masters were brought to account for their violent
behaviour towards those in subordinate positions, or that abused,
neglected, orphaned children became the objects of special attention
from philanthropists, indicates there were some criteria by which
violence in the home was judged. However, it is far from clear that
there were universal, normative standards by which violence in the
domestic sphere could be judged. The persistent use of violence as a
disciplinary tool in various social settings ensured that the shift to
less physical methods of maintaining discipline and controlling
subordinates in the home would be slow, with continuity in such
practices often eclipsing the piecemeal and fitful changes in attitudes
or the law. Truly exceptional cases such as the Brownrigg episode were
helpful in reassuring society that the worst sorts of abuse would not go
unpunished and offered windows of discursive opportunity for journalists
and social commentators to re-inscribe what they saw at the collective
understanding of thresholds of tolerance for such behaviour. But the
considerable work on domestic violence from the nineteenth century on
offers a potent caution against any claims for a substantial shift in
attitudes.
Conclusion
This essay has argued that through a re-examination of a wide range
of sources, we can begin to build a more complete picture of domestic
violence in eighteenth-century England. The evidence is stronger for
elites and middling sorts, especially when the victims of domestic
violence tried to end their marriages and sought the assistance of the
consistory courts. But the picture remains sketchy for the majority of
people in similar, violent situations--meaning usually poor women and
children--who continued to suffer in private (if not in silence) because
they lacked the resources to challenge their abusers. But a close
examination of even fragmentary evidence offers clues to the wider
historical compass that must be accorded for violence as part of daily
life in the domestic sphere for men and women, parents and children, and
masters and servants in eighteenth century London.
For historians seeking to uncover the multiplicity of violent
experiences in the past, there are significant shortcomings in the most
likely and readily available sources--the court records--simply because
violence was normative for correction and discipline. Establishing when
and where to draw the line on violence in the domestic sphere proved
exceedingly difficult. Thus examples of excessive violence, that which
crossed an ill-defined and culturally constructed threshold, appeared
only rarely in the courts. The courts certainly moved to condemn
systematic abuse when it came to light, and made some attempts to halt
such behaviour by detaining abusive spouses or by issuing peace bonds,
even if they were ultimately powerless to prevent the recurrence of
violence. But substantive legal reforms and fundamental changes in
attitudes towards the acceptability of violence to correct and control
subordinates would not be realized until much later. What we can do to
better understand the eighteenth-century experience is place the limited
number of particular cases of prosecuted domestic violence and their
outcomes against other contemporary evidence that attitudes towards
violence in many forms, including domestic violence, were hardening even
from the mid eighteenth century. (85)
One late-eighteenth century commentator believed things had
improved, arguing that "the lives of children and servants are no
longer at the disposal of the father of the family. Nor is domestic
authority maintained, as formerly, by severities, which the mild spirit
of modern laws rarely inflicts on the worst public malefactor."
(86) But there are many counter examples to this optimistic claim, in
which oppressed and abused wives and children were delivered again into
the hands of their tormentors. Intimate violence was a phenomenon that,
even if it was not coming under closer censure and control, was
certainly being monitored and prosecuted within a larger cultural world
in which other forms of violence were losing their former claims to
legitimacy. But the nature, incidence, and irregular condemnation of
such violence from those in positions of authority suggested by the
sources analyzed here should remind us to be cautious about arguments
that posit the steady "civilization" of society. The cases
highlighted here speak to the contingency, the class differences and the
irregular responses to violence, especially in the private sphere of the
home. Whether we are getting a complete picture yet, is still difficult
to say. But by widening our scope of sources for the examination of
domestic violence, it seems likely that we will discover more evidence
of the role that violence played in life behind closed doors in
eighteenth-century London.
Department of History
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg MB R3T 5V5
Canada
ENDNOTES
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to audiences in
Riverside, CA and Oxford. My thanks to those audiences, to Catherine
Quirk for research assistance, and to Donna Andrew, John Beattie, Andrew
Harris, Karen Harvey, Amy Masciola, and Andrea McKenzie for many helpful
comments and suggestions. I am grateful to the SSHRC and to the
University of Manitoba for research support. Permission from RPS Rainer
to quote from the records of the Royal Philanthropic Society is
gratefully acknowledged.
1. Peter King, "Punishing Assault: The Transformation of
Attitudes in the English Courts," Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 27:1 (Summer, 1996): 43-74, quote at p. 47. The two works King
cites are Margaret Hunt, "Wife-Beating, Domesticity and
Women's Independence in Eighteenth-Century London," Gender and
History 4:1 (1992):10-33; Anna Clark, "Humanity or Justice? Wife
beating and the Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," in
Carol Smart, ed. Regulating Womanhood (London, 1992): 187206. One of the
first studies was J.A. Sharpe, "Domestic Homicide in Early Modem
England," Historical Journal 24:1 (March, 1981): 29-48. The
seventeenth-century experience is covered in Elizabeth A. Foyster,
Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London,
1999), and for Cheshire see Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and Social
Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003), 63-74.
2. Susan Dwyer Amussen, "'Being stirred to much
inquietness': violence and domestic violence in early modern
England," Journal of Women's History 6 (1994): 70-89; Anthony
Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800 (New Haven,
1995), esp. ch. 10; Jennine Hurl-Eamon, "Domestic Violence
Prosecuted: women binding over their husbands for assault at Westminster
Quarter Sessions, 1685-1720," Journal of Family History 26:4
(2001):435-454; Elizabeth Foyster, "Creating a veil of silence?
Politeness and marital violence in the English household,"
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th ser. 12 (2002):
395-415; Elizabeth Foyster, "At the limits of liberty: married
women and confinement in eighteenth-century England," Continuity
and Change 17:1 (2002): 39-62; Fay Bound, "An uncivil culture:
marital violence and domestic politics in York, c. 1660 c. 1760" in
Mark Hallett and Jane Rendall, eds., Eighteenth Century York: culture,
space and society (York, 2003): 50-58. For Scotland, see Leah Leneman,
"'A tyrant and tormentor': violence against wives in
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland," Continuity and
Change 12:1 (1997): 31-54; Carolyn Conley "Atonement and Domestic
Homicide in late Victorian Scotland," in R. McMahon, ed. Crime, Law
and Popular Culture in Europe since 1500 (Collupton, forthcoming).
3. Joanne Bailey, Unquiet Lives: Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in
England, 16601800 (Cambridge, 2003); Elizabeth A. Foyster, Marital
Violence: An English Family History, 1660-1857 (Cambridge, 2005).
4. Barbara Hanawalt, "Violence in the Domestic Milieu of Late
Medieval England" in Richard W. Kaeuper, ed. Violence in Medieval
Society (Rochester, 2000): 197-214.
5. Richard Bum, Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer 22nd
ed. (1814), I: 181.
6. Evans v. Evans (1790), Eng. Rep. 161: 467.
7. See, for example, Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England,
1530-1987 (Oxford, 1990) along with the works by Foyster and Bailey
noted above.
8. Stabbing could be punished under 1 Jac. I, c. 8 (1604). The 1670
Coventry Act (22 & 23 Car. I, c.1) made it a non-clergyable offence,
after lying in wait, to maim or, specifically, to "cut out or
disable the tongue, put out an eye, slit the nose, or cut off or disable
any limb or member." Such attacks were usually committed in the
course of a robbery.
9. Legitimacy and violence is discussed in Susan Dwyer Amussen,
"Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence
in Early Modem England," Journal of British Studies 34:1 (January,
1995): 1-34.
10. Stone, Road to Divorce, 190.
11. Bailey, Unquiet Lives, 48.
12. Anna Clark estimates one domestic assault per week in Middlesex
in the 1780s and 1790s. "Humanity or Justice?," 192.
13. Guildhall Justice Room Corporation of London Record Office
[CLRO] GJR/M and Mansion House Justice Room (MJR/M) minute books.
14. Norma Landau, The Justices of the Peace 1679-1760 (Berkeley,
1984), 23-29, 20923; David Eastwood, Governing Rural England: Tradition
and Transformation in Local Government, 1780-1840 (Oxford, 1994), 88-95;
Peter King, Crime, Justice, and Discretion in England, 1740-1820
(Oxford, 2000), ch.4.
15. King, Crime, Justice, and Discretion, 85-86.
16. CLRO, GJR/M 2, 17 November 1761 (Rottam); GJR/M 18, 10
September 1782 (English); GJR/M 4, 5 December 1775 (Hands); GJR/M 41, 6
October 1789 (Wittick).
17. CLRO, GJR/M 3, 6 May, 1762 (Abrahams).
18. CLRO, GJR/M 3, 19 April 1762.
19. GJR/M 37, 29 August 1788 (Woodcock).
20. Elizabeth Silverthorne, ed. Deposition Book of Richard Wyatt,
JP, 1767-1776 Surrey Record Society vol. 30 (Castle Arch, Guilford:
Surrey Record Society, 1978), no. 116.
21. GJR/M 8, 7 May 1779 (Alchorn).
22. MJR/M 64, 27 September 1790 (Carrington).
23. GJR/M 4, 13 December 1775 (Connolly).
24. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modem England, 66. On violent wives,
see Sharpe, "Domestic homicide," 34-36; Laura Gowing, Domestic
Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996),
228-29; Bailey, Unquiet Lives, 128-131.
25. CLRO: Sessions of the Peace, February 1760-September 1833. The
sample includes 2369 cases in total, 1834 of which are assault cases.
26. In both of the murder cases, witnesses stated that the wives
had been subjected to violence in the past. See OBSP (September, 1761)
no. 264, Thomas Daniels, and (April 1791) no. 162, Edward Pritchard.
27. On this filtering process, see Gregory T. Smith, "The
State and the Culture of Violence in London, 1760-1840" (PhD
dissertation, University of Toronto, 1999) Ch. 6.
28. King, "Punishing Assault"; Smith, "The State and
the Culture of Violence," 307-26.
29. Blackstone, Commentaries IV: 357. Blackstone was quoting from
Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments, (1764), first published in
English translation in 1767.
30. "I would rather (said he [i.e., Johnson]) have the rod to
be the general terrour [sic] to all, to make them learn, than tell a
child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your
brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in
itself." James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R.W. Chapman,
Introduced by Pat Rogers (Oxford, 1980), 34.
31. Francis Place, Autobiography, ed. Mary Thale (Cambridge, 1972),
59, 62.
32. Academy in Soho Square, Rules and Orders of the Academy in Soho
Square, London ([London, 1740?]), 5.
33. Anthony Purver, Counsel to Friends' Children (London,
1799), 15-16. On children caught up in marital violence, see Foyster,
Marital Violence, ch. 3.
34. Times, 28 May, 1810; Times, 20 October, 1810.
35. Hurl-Eamon found no cases of child abuse among Westminster
quarter sessions in the period 1685-1720. ("Domestic Violence
Prosecuted," 443).
36. MJR/M 39, 25 July 1788 (Burnall).
37. For Bundy, see London Metropolitan Archive [LMA], MJ/SR (April
1805); For Goodman, see The National Archive [TNA], HO/13/11, f.
181-182. (16 May 1797).
38. Philanthropic Society, Registers of Admissions, Surrey History
Centre [SHC] 2271/10/1, f. 12.
39. Philanthropic Society, Girl's Admission Registers,
(1789-1806), SHC, 2271/18/1, f.3.
40. Philanthropic Society, Registers of Admissions, SHC 2271/10/1,
f. 55.
41. Philanthropic Society, Registers of Admissions, SHC 2271/10/1,
f. 27.
42. Philanthropic Society, Girl's Admission Registers, SHC
2271/18/1, f. 33.
43. Philanthropic Society, Registers of Admissions, SHC 2271/10/1,
f. 127.
44. Report from the Select Committee on the Employment of Boys on
Sweeping Chimnies Parliamentary Papers (1817) VI; M.D. George, London
Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1965), 239-242; Hugh Cunningham,
The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood Since the
Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 51-64.
45. [Anonymous] Parental Cruelty. Final Examination and Commitment
of the Parents. Distressing Case of Margaret Crane who was Discovered
Strapped down in a Wretched Cole Hole, being there confined by her
Parents. Perfectly Naked Nearly bent double, and covered with Filth!!
(London, 1834).
46. George London Life, 231-4; Beattie "Criminality of
Women," 85-6; Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters 2 vols. (Oxford,
1978-1995), I: 332 shows that this was a concern much earlier in the
eighteenth century; servants were considered part of the family in which
they served, both in common parlance, but also in law as the master was
obliged to provide basic food and shelter as well as training. K.D.M.
Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England
1660-1900 (Cambridge, 1985), 321.
47. Marshall, "Domestic Servants," 39.
48. Silverthome, Deposition book of Richard Wyatt, 47, nos. 258-60:
case of John Harcourt, who beat his wife and servants. See also Tim
Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender 1660-1750: Life and work in the
London household (London, 2000), 39-40, 91-94.
49. A Gentleman of the Inner Temple, Laws Concerning Master and
Servant, (London, 1767), 126; Richard Bum, The Justice of the Peace and
Parish Officer 13th ed. (4 vols., London, 1776), 1: 107; Meldrum,
Domestic Service, 39.
50. CLRO, GJR/M 3, 3 May, 1762 (Woodhouse)
51. CLRO, CF/10/1, no. 17 (22 March 1786); Ingram, no.10 (2 March
1786); Moulding, no.29 (17 September 1788).
52. See for example, CF/10/1, nos. 1,9, 23, 25, 26, 39. Punishment
usually meant commitment to the Bridewell house of correction for the
space often days, but up occasionally to one or two months.
53. CLRO, CF/10/1, no. 1 (10 February 1786).
54. J.S. Cockburn, "Patterns of Violence in English Society:
Homicide in Kent 15601985," Past & Present 130 (1991), 97; also
see Thomas Forbes, "Crowner's Quest," Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society 68: 1 (1978), 35.
55. Laws Concerning Master and Servant, 126.
56. British Mercury and Evening Advertiser (22 November 1780), 3.
57. See I.E.V. Forrester, "The Middlesex Magistrate,
1760-1820. Some Social and Economic Aspects of the Work of J.P.s."
(M.A. thesis, University of London, 1934), 244-49, for other examples of
the poor treatment of apprentices.
58. LMA, MJ/SBB/1152/43-45, July 9, 1759.
59. LMA, MJ/SBB/1310/61-62; SBB/1312/67-69. See also
MJ/SP/1772/10/084 in which an abused apprentice was released from his
indenture.
60. Deposition Book of Richard Wyatt, nos. 258-260.
61. TNA KB 1/29 Hilary 38 Geo. III, pt. 2, (1798) Affidavit of
Sarah Kingsworth. In June 1772, Richard Wyatt, JP, heard the complaint
of Ann Johnson, hired as a servant by Sarah May. When Johnson asked for
her 8s in wages, May refused to pay and beat her too. The outcome is not
recorded. (Deposition Book of Richard Wyatt, no. 178).
62. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, VIII:269. A brief
account of the details appears in Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (13
August 1767), 1, with a much fuller rendition following the trial
appearing in a later edition (16 September 1767), 4.
63. George Theodore Wilkinson, The Newgate Calendar Improved (orig.
London, 1816; reprinted London, 1991), 308. See also Genuine and
Authentic Account of the Life, Trial, and Execution of Elizabeth
Brownrigg, who was Executed on Monday the 14th of September 1767, for
the barbarous Murder of Mary Clifford, her Apprentice Girl. (London: R.
Richards, 1767).
64. Gentleman's Magazine 37 (1767), 434.
65. Gentleman's Magazine 37 (1767), 434.
66. Gentleman's Magazine 37 (1767), 435.
67. The trial is recounted in the Old Bailey Proceedings. See
<www.oldbaileyonline.org>-t17670909-1
68. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, (21 September 1767), 2.
69. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (29 August 1767), 2.
70. Wilkinson, Newgate Calendar, 313.
71. Gentleman's Magazine 37 (1767), 437.
72. Gentleman's Magazine 37 (1767), 476; Gazetteer and New
Daily Advertiser (15 September 1767), 2. Though Brownrigg's husband
and son were acquitted of the murder charge, they were reindicted on
charges of assault.
73. In one letter printed in the London Evening Post, the author
advised little mercy be shown to Mr. Brownrigg and his son, who were
acquitted of the murder charge but were to stand trial on the
misdemeanour of assault. Though "I am no Lawyer," the author
'Justitia' wrote, "[I] cannot help wishing that Whipping
may be one Part of the Punishment which these inhuman Wretches may
suffer, as that seems a Punishment in Point, and peculiarly proper for
their crime." (26-29 September 1767), 3.
74. London Evening Post (29 September-1 October, 1767), 4.
75. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (16 September 1767), 2;
Public Advertiser (16 September 1767), 2.
76. Gentleman's Magazine 73 (1803), 275.
77. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (7 August 1767), 2.
78. Margaret Anne Doody, "The Law, the Page and the Body of
Woman: Murder and Murderesses in the Age of Johnson" in Paul J.
Korshin, ed. The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual (New York, 1987),
146.
79. Gentleman's Magazine 37 (1767), 419.
80. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (6 September 1767), 3.
81. Public Advertiser (15 September 1767), 1.
82. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (15 September 1767), 3;
Public Advertiser (15 September 1767), 3.
83. Hanawalt, "Violence in the Domestic Milieu," 212.
84. Thomas L. Haskell, "Capitalism and the Origins of the
Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2," American Historical Review 90:3
(June, 1985), 553.
85. Beattie, "Violence in Early Modem England"; King,
"Punishing Assault"; Greg T. Smith, "Violent Crime and
the Public Weal in England, 1700-1900" in R. McMahon, ed. Crime,
Law and Popular Culture in Europe since 1500.
86. Samuel K. Horsley, The Abounding of Iniquity No Just Ground for
Distrusting the Prophecies or Promises of Holy Writ (London, 1792), 7.
By Greg T. Smith
University of Manitoba
Table 1 Punishment of Known Cases of Male Domestic Violence: London
Sessions of the Peace and Sessions of Gaol Delivery, 1760-1833
Sentence Verdict 1760-79 1780-99 1800-19 1820-33 Total
Fined Guilty 1 1 2
Confessed 2 2 4
Judgement Respited Guilty 1 1 2
Fine and/or Guilty 4 2 5 1 12
recognizance/ Confessed 1 2 3
sureties to keep
the peace
Imprisoned and/or Guilty 3 3 1 6 13
Imprisoned with
other sanctions
Total 11 9 7 9 36
Sources: CLRO, Sessions of the Peace and Gaol Delivery Books (SM, SMP,
SMG), 1760-1833.
