{"id":4845,"date":"2014-04-16T21:39:34","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T02:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4845"},"modified":"2014-04-16T21:39:34","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T02:39:34","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-april-16-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4845","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for April 16, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Moderate Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout most of Western history, husbands have had the legal and\u00a0moral\u00a0<\/em>right to beat their wives to provide “moderate correction,” according to\u00a0Untying the Knot: A Short History of Divorce\u00a0<\/em>by Roderick Phillips. \u00a0The Catholic Church accepted this right of the husband as did most of the courts of Europe. \u00a0The key question, though, is: What was considered “moderate correction”? \u00a0“The violence should not draw blood,” stated Phillips, citing examples from many law codes, “and if a stick were used, it should be no thicker than a man’s thumb.” \u00a0That is actually the origin of the expression “rule of thumb.” \u00a0Many everyday proverbs from the Renaissance contain advice such as, “Don’t expect anything good from an ass, a nut or a wife, unless you have a stick in your hand.” Or, “Good or bad, the horse gets the spur; good or bad, the wife gets the stick.”<\/p>\n

The basic legal principle – expressed in canon and civil law – was that since a husband was responsible for his wife’s actions, he also had the right to punish her to teach her. The broad acceptance of wife-beating started to change with the Protestant Reformation, which frowned on the practice and made it a crime. \u00a0In America, the Puritan colonies in New England outlawed wife-beating as early as 1641, but in merry olde England it wasn’t until 1891 that a husband’s right to “moderate correction” was officially abolished.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0An Underground Education<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Moderate Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Throughout most of Western history, husbands have had the legal and\u00a0moral\u00a0right to beat their wives to provide “moderate correction,” according to\u00a0Untying the Knot: A Short History of Divorce\u00a0by Roderick Phillips. \u00a0The Catholic Church accepted this right of the husband as did most of the courts of Europe. \u00a0The key […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4846,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4845\/revisions\/4846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}