Domestic Violence: Tolerating the Intolerable?

Abstract

The English common law or law created by English judicial decisions treated the wife as the husband's chattel, allowing the husband to do as he pleased in the private domain of his home. The law actually allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick "no thicker than his thumb" and explicitly sanctioned the abuse of women within marriage. According to Blackstone, a man was allowed to give his wife "moderate correction". Blackstone's Commentaries Vol 1 8th ed (1775) p 445.) 

The position of a woman as a 'chatel', in English common law, changed radically in the fifties when women began to be considered as separate legal entities with distinct legal rights. The law developed mainly to protect women's economic rights granted by marital status. This recognition of a woman's distinct legal identity materialised in the form of payment of maintenance to her on breakdown of the marriage.