ABSTRACT
Neither wife battering nor marital violence, in general, is found as a crime in a Danish rural society in 1750–1850. A few times, indirectly, we hear of it through other types of cases, but even if tyrannical and unchristian behaviour was specifically forbidden by law, no despotic husband from the local community in question was ever prosecuted for this crime. This article argues that, even if “justifiable” wife beating was probably broadly accepted, social control in small and strongly interrelated societies probably dealt with unjustifiable wife battering in informal ways and without involving the authorities: wife battering was against the moral codes of patriarchalism. Furthermore, most wives were surrounded by friends and relatives who could intervene. This seems to be the only reasonable explanation for the absence of wife battering cases in court, because there is no doubt that wife battering did occur.
