Shocking Stories About Your Golden Era Relatives

[2jakes]

There is a great and long tradition for it.

Sorry...I don't understand.

 

[jamespowers]

Sorry...I don't understand.

Putting the hurt on anyone who would hurt a woman/his wife has a long tradition behind it.

 

[2jakes]

Putting the hurt on anyone who would hurt a woman/his wife has a long tradition behind it.

Tradition to me means being passed down from one generation to another.

Nobody passed that tradition to me.
Unless in a way it may have been.

When I was a kid of 12, I aimed a loaded pistol at a man who was
going to hurt my ma.

He ran away like a wounded coward.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In my grandparent's neighborhood back in the golden era, wife beating just wasn't looked down upon---you got it good if you did it. If it wasn't from the wife's brothers then it was from one of the neighborhood men who straightened him out REAL good. He got a warning and then a straightening if the warning wasn't heeded. I think my own grandfather had to do a little "straightening" a few times. They usually got it the first times---he had hands like hams.

My grandfather threatened to kill my father if he ever laid a hand on my mother. And he wasn't kidding.

In Maryland, as late as 1940, wife beaters were sentenced to public whipping.

 

[Renault]

I will put the hurt on any "man" that should do that to a women. And not to be
disrespectful...but the same goes to any man that hurts dogs or cats.

+1! This!^^^^

And I won't tolerate mistreatment of horses either!

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I'm dictator, mistreatement of domestic animals will be a death-penalty offense. No appeals, no mercy.

 

[2jakes]

When I'm dictator, mistreatement of domestic animals will be a death-penalty offense. No appeals, no mercy.

Good for you LizzieMaine... you have my support 100 %...:eusa_clap

 

[Fading Fast]

My girlfriend has participated in (and I've help in a small way) with several dog rescues and it is beyond painful to see how some people treat their dogs.

What is amazing is how much dogs want to love and be loved. Last year, we helped rescue a Lab / Great Pyrenees mix who had been abused (mainly underfed and not having any medical care, but some physical abuse) and my girlfriend's parents adopted him (they fell in love with him from his picture and his story).

We were just home at Christmas and saw him for the first time in nine months: he is gorgeous, healthy and incredibly happy - very loved and very loving. The transformation from this sick, scared and boney dog to him today is fantastic and heart-warming.

One other point on this topic: We have a detective in our family who has told us that while domestic abuse skews to men abusing women, it sadly does go both ways - and is no less horrible.

 

[DecoDame]

When I'm dictator, mistreatement of domestic animals will be a death-penalty offense. No appeals, no mercy.

How may we hasten your dictatorship, Lizzie?

...In Maryland, as late as 1940, wife beaters were sentenced to public whipping.

At the risk of opening a can o' worms, that surprises me. My impression has been that husbands could get away with quite a lot with their wives back in the day, as far as the law was concerned, largely with impunity. Including marital rape. A quick google says that that it wasn't until 1993 that marital rape became a crime in all 50 states. So it surprises me that wife beating had such a harsh and public repercussion there. Not unhappy about that, just surprised. I figured that was why male family members or neighbors had to take matters into their own hands, because the law wasn't stellar about doing it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

At the risk of opening a can o' worms, that surprises me. My impression has been that husbands could get away with quite a lot with their wives back in the day, as far as the law was concerned, largely with impunity. Including marital rape. A quick google says that that it wasn't until 1993 that marital rape became a crime in all 50 states. So it surprises me that wife beating had such a harsh and public repercussion there. Not unhappy about that, just surprised. I figured that was why male family members or neighbors had to take matters into their own hands, because the law wasn't stellar about doing it.

It depended on where you lived. Some local police departments might have made it a policy not to interfere in "domestic matters" but as far as actual laws are concerned, wife-beating was illegal in every state by 1920.

Superman was against wife-beating, too.

 

[Fading Fast]

Fantastic Superman comic.

I don't know if you noticed, Lizzie, but I wondered earlier in a post if you knew if divorce laws changed during WWII as it seemed like the going to Reno thing was less common after WWII (in movies - where I get too much of my information from) than it was before?

 

[DecoDame]

It depended on where you lived. Some local police departments might have made it a policy not to interfere in "domestic matters" but as far as actual laws are concerned, wife-beating was illegal in every state by 1920.

Superman was against wife-beating, too.

Go, Supes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As far as no-fault divorce goes, that was largely an innovation of the sixties and seventies, but even before the war many states granted divorces on the grounds of "mental cruelty," which was usually very broadly defined as "unhappiness." It wasn't hard to get a divorce in these situations, and divorces on the grounds of "physical cruelty" were granted even faster.

The "go to Reno" cliche came about because certain entrepreneurs around the turn of the century saw an angle to take advantage of the state's easy divorce laws and short residency requirement by building resorts where would-be divorcees could luxuriate in comfort while waiting for the paperwork to go thru. It was never something taken advantage of by the average working-class woman looking to get out of a bad marriage.

Many bad marriages in the Era ended in abandonment, not divorce. Even on a cruelty charge, it cost money to get a lawyer to handle matters, and many working-class women couldn't afford this. So they'd simply pack up the kids and disappear. Or, the husband would take care of the problem by disappearing himself. These sorts of failed marriages don't show up in the divorce statistics, but they were extremely common.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

As far as no-fault divorce goes, that was largely an innovation of the sixties and seventies, but even before the war many states granted divorces on the grounds of "mental cruelty," which was usually very broadly defined as "unhappiness." It wasn't hard to get a divorce in these situations, and divorces on the grounds of "physical cruelty" were granted even faster.

And now it's simply "irreconcilable differences, " translation: "I've fallen out of love." :doh:

 

[tonyb]

Then as now, people assaulted their spouses. And then, as now, many of those abused spouses stayed in those abusive relationships for their own reasons -- economic necessity, negative self-image, familial expectations, whatever.

I've heard many an anecdote concerning the abused wife's brothers or uncles or father "taking care of" the problem, but I take almost all of those reports with a large grain of salt. Conversely, I've witnessed domestic assault up close and personal, in my own home and in the homes of cousins and neighbors and friends, and I never once saw a superman of any sort come to the damsel's defense. I've seen the young male offspring (my own juvenile self among them) make such attempts, but a kid against a grown man is no fight at all.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother's second husband was physically abusive, both to her and to my sister and me. After seven months, she locked him out of the house, and when she was sure he was gone, she demolished his motorcycle with a sledgehammer and left the parts in the dooryard. He never came near us again.

 

[tonyb]

At least she had the confidence to make her own way without that worthless SOB.

Alas, too many lack that confidence. Sadder still is that in many of those cases that lack of confidence is well placed.

 

[DecoDame]

Sad, indeed, how common a problem this was and still is, and how many of us have personal stories.

 

[Atticus Finch]

I've always heard that my grandfather was an "old time alcoholic". He'd be sober as a judge for five or six or ten months at a time. He'd go to church every Sunday with grandmother. He'd manage the family business like a Rockefeller. He'd be the perfect father to his four boys. Indeed, he'd be an absolute, rock-solid citizen...while it lasted. Then, without warning, he'd not show up for supper one night. When Uncle Bill would find him, he'd be living with his long-time girlfriend over on Harkers Island...and they'd be two or three days into a month long drunk. Pretty soon, he'd be back in the hospital...swearing never to drink again. He'd dry out, move back to Beaufort and resume attending church with grandmother every Sunday. I guess divorce just wasn't an option in the 1940's South.

Sadly, he never did get sober. He died in Sea Level Hospital...after one last binge...in September before I was born in November.

AF

 

[2jakes]

Then as now, people assaulted their spouses. And then, as now, many of those abused spouses stayed in those abusive relationships for their own reasons -- economic necessity, negative self-image, familial expectations, whatever.

I've heard many an anecdote concerning the abused wife's brothers or uncles or father "taking care of" the problem, but I take almost all of those reports with a large grain of salt. Conversely, I've witnessed domestic assault up close and personal, in my own home and in the homes of cousins and neighbors and friends, and I never once saw a superman of any sort come to the damsel's defense. I've seen the young male offspring (my own juvenile self among them) make such attempts, but a kid against a grown man is no fight at all.

And that's why as a kid of 12. I placed my gun to the s.o.b.'s forehead.
He never bothered us again. But that may have been the exception.