England -- a husband had the legal right to beat
his wife, "with a reasonable instrument." There
is a story that Judge Buller, when charging the
jury in a case of wife-beating, said, "Without
undertaking to define exactly what a reasonable
instrument is, I hold, gentlemen of the jury, that
a stick no thicker than my thumb comes clearly
within that description." A committee of women
waited upon him the next day to learn the exact
size of the judge's thumb.

Wife-beating, unless done with uncommon bru-
tality, was sanctioned not only by law but by public
opinion. Mrs. Emily P. Collins (who organized
at South Bristol, New York, in 1848, the first local
woman's rights society in the world) says in her
reminiscences:

"In those early days a husband's supremacy was
often enforced in the rural districts by corporal
chastisement, and it was considered by most
people as quite right and proper -- as much so as
the correction of refractory children in like manner.
I remember in my own neighborhood a Methodist
class-leader and exhorter, esteemed a worthy
citizen, who, every few weeks, gave his wife a
beating with a horsewhip. He said it was neces-
sary, in order to keep her in subjection, and
because she scolded so much."

Mrs. Collins added that it was no wonder the
poor woman sometimes scolded, as she had to

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