ABSTRACT
I observed in Chapter 21 how the common law traditionally upheld the near-absolute authority of a parent over a child. The right to chastise was held inviolable, subject to manslaughter and murder, though the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act did specify offences of common and ‘aggravated’ assault.1 In a rare success against a parent in 1869 a man named Griffin was convicted for so severely thrashing his 2 1/2-year-old daughter with an 18-inch strap when her crying annoyed him, that she died of shock. His defence that he had every right to ‘correct’ his child was rejected by the judge on the grounds that the chastisement must be appropriate to the age of the child.2 And by the later 1880s it was established in principle that chastisement by teachers and parents must be ‘reasonable’ but it was still difficult to secure convictions before conservative-minded judges where no death resulted. Thus, when at that time a father was tried for stripping and beating his frail son when drunk till the boy was found a mass of bruises, the magistrate held that this was insufficient to amount to an ‘aggravated assault’!3
