The "Rule of Thumb for Wife-Beating" Hoax
Feminists often make that claim that the "rule of thumb" used to mean
that it was legal to beat your wife with a rod, so long as that rod
were no thicker than the husband's thumb. Thus, one constantly runs into
assertions like this:
However, Christina Hoff Sommers documents how the link between the
phrase "rule of thumb" and wifebeating is a feminist-inspired myth
of recent vintage. In her book "Who Stole Feminism"...
...The 'rule of thumb' story is an example of revisionist history that
feminists happily fell into believing. It reinforces their perspective
on society, and tell it as a way of winning converts to their angry creed...
The 'rule of thumb', however, turns out to be an excellent example of
what may be called a feminist fiction. Is is not to be found in William
Blackstone's treatise on English common law. On the contrary,
British law since the 1700s and our American laws predating the Revolution
prohibit wife beating, though there have been periods and places in
which the prohibition was only indifferently enforced.
That the phrase did not even originate in legal practice could have been
ascertained by any fact-checker who took the trouble to look it up in
the Oxford English Dictionary, which notes that the term has been used
metaphorically for at least three hundred years to refer to any method
of measurement or technique of estimation derived from experience rather
than science.
According to Canadian folklorist Philip Hiscock, "The real explanation
of 'rule of thumb' is that it derives from wood workers... who knew
their trade so well they rarely or never fell back on the use of such
things as rulers. instead, they would measure things by, for example,
the length of their thumbs." Hiscock adds that the phrase came into
metaphorical use by the late seventeenth century. Hiscock could not
track the source of the idea that the term derives from a principle
governing wife beating, but he believes it is an example of 'modern
folklore' and compares it to other 'back-formed explanations.' such as
the claim asparagus comes from 'sparrow-grass' or that 'ring around the
rosy' is about the plague.
We shall see that Hiscock's hunch was correct, but we must begin by
exonerating William Blackstone (1723-1780), the Englishman who codified
centuries of legal customs and practices into the elegant and clearly
organized tome known as Commentaries on the Laws of England. The
Commentaries, a classic of legal literature, became the basis for the
development of American law. The so-called rule of thumb as a guideline
for wife-beating does not occur in Blackstone's compendium, although he
does refer to an ancient law that permitted "domestic chastisement"....
In America, there have been laws against wife beating since before the
Revolution. By 1870, it was illegal in almost every state; but even
before then, wife-beaters were arrested and punished for assault and
battery. The historian and feminist Elizabeth Pleck observes in a
scholarly article entitled "Wife-Battering in Nineteenth-Century America":
It has often been claimed that wife-beating in nineteenth-century
America was legal... Actually, though, several states passed statutes
legally prohibiting wife-beating; and at least one statute even predates
the American Revolution. The Massachusetts Bay Colony prohibited
wife-beating as early as 1655. The edict states: "No man shall strike
his wife nor any woman her husband on penalty of such fine not exceeding
ten pounds for one offense, or such corporal punishment as the County
shall determine."
[Pleck] points out that punishments for wife-beaters could be severe:
according to an 1882 Maryland statute, the culprit could receive forty
lashes at the whipping post; in Delaware, the number was thirty. In New
Mexico, fines ranging from $225 to $1000 were levied, or sentences of
one to five years in prison imposed. For most of our history, in fact,
wife-beating has been considered a sin comparable to to thievery or
adultery. Religious groups -- especially Protestant groups such as
Quakers, Methodists, and Baptists -- punished, shunned, and
excommunicated wife-beaters. Husbands, brothers, and neighbors often
took vengence against the batterer. Vigilante parties sometimes abducted
wife-beaters and whipped them.
Just how did the false account originate, and how did it achieve
authority and currency? As with many myths, there is a small core of
fact surrounded by an accretion of error. In the course of rendering
rulings on cases before them, two Southern judges had alluded to an
'ancient law' according to which a man could beat his wife as long as
the implement was not wider than his thumb. The judges, one from North
Carolina and one from Mississippi, did not accept the authority of the
'ancient law.' The North Carolina judge refered to it as 'barbarism,'
and both judges found the husband in the case in question guilty of wife
abuse. Nevertheless, their rulings seemed to tolerate the notion that
men had a measure of latitude in physically chastising their wives.
Fortunately, as Pleck takes pains to remind us, they were not
representative of judicial opinion in the rest of the country.
In 1976, Del Martin, a coordinator of the N.O.W. Task Force on Battered
Women, came across a reference to the two judges and their remarks.
Neither judge had used the phrase "rule of thumb," but a thumb had been
mentioned, and Ms. Martin took note of it:
Our law, based upon the old English common-law doctrines, explicitly
permitted wife-beating for correctional purposes. However, certain
restrictions did exist... For instance, the common-law doctrine had been
modified to allow the husband "the right to whip his wife, provided that
he used a switch no bigger than his thumb" -- a rule of thumb, so to speak.
Ms. Martin had not claimed that the term "rule of thumb" originated from
common law. Before long, however, the "ancient law" alluded to by two
obscure Southern judges was being treated as an unchallenged principle
of both British and American law, and journalists and academics alike
were bandying the notion about. Feminist Terry Davidson, in an article
entitled "Wife Beating: A Recurring Phenomenon Throughout History,"
claims that "one of the reasons nineteenth century British wives were
dealt with so harshly by their husbands and by their legal system was
the 'rule of thumb'" and castigates Blackstone himself. "Blackstone saw
nothing unreasonable about the wife-beating law. In fact, he believed it
to be quite moderate."
These interpretive errors were given added authority by a group of
scholars and lawyers who, in 1982, prepared a report on wife abuse for
the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Under the Rule of Thumb:
Battered Women and the Administration of Justice -- A Report of the
United States Commission on Civil Rights_. On the second page, they
note: "American law is built upon the British common law that condoned
wife beating and even prescribed the weapon to be used. This 'rule of
thumb' stipulated that a man could only beat his wife with a 'rod not
thicker than his thumb.'" It went on to speak of Blackstone as the
jurist who "greatly influenced the making of the law in the American
colonies [and who] commented on the 'rule of thumb,'" justifying the
rule by noting that "the law thought it reasonable to intrust [the
husband] with this power of... chastisement, in the same moderation that
a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children."
The publication of the report established the feminist fable about the
origins of the term in popular lore, and the misogyny of Blackstone and
"our law" as "fact." Misstatements about the "rule of thumb" still
appear in the popular press.
That same 1993 Time magazine article that popularized the nonexistent
March of Dimes study on domestic violence and birth defects and reported
that "between 22% and 35% of all visits by females to emergency rooms
are for injuries from domestic assaults" also cited new York University
law professor Holly Maguigan: "We talk about the notion of the rule of
thumb, forgetting that it had to do with the restrdomestic violence and
birth defects and reported that "between 22% and 35% of all visits by
females to emergency rooms are for injuries from domestic assaults"... |
