The Garden Hose Treatment for Domestic Violence (John Caves) - 1927

PHOTO CAPTION: Men, don’t threaten the wife! This picture illustrates what happened to John Caves, of Akron, O., to whom Judge E. E. Zesiger administered such a pants-warming. Caves threatened to thrash his wife, the latter testified, and the judge decided twenty lashes would be an excellent, corrective. An innocent bystander posed with the judge for this picture.

[“Judge’s Pants-Warming Party,” syndicated (NEA), The Mexia Daily News (Tx.), Feb. 8, 1927, p. 8]

FULL TEXT: Akron, O., Feb. 12 – Being soundly thrashed as a “wife beater” with an 18-inch piece of garden hose by a judge over his knee in a jail cell when arrested on a charge of intoxication, doesn’t appeal to John Caves, 40-year-old bricklayer.

Neither does he relish being held up as a warning to future husbands, who take a few whacks at their wives.

Caves, having imbibed a bit too freely, was awaiting sentence in jail, when Municipal Judge E. E. Zesiger, armed with a piece of garden hose in his hand, entered Caves’ cell, laid him across his knee and gave him 20 stripes “to cure him of wife beating.”

Now – and thereby hangs a tale – it so happens that Caves has been arrested not for abusing his wife but for being intoxicated. Caves insists she’s not a poor abused woman, saying. “John has never laid a hand on me, drunk or sober!”

~ Supports Whipping Post. ~

Caves agrees with the judge most heartily. “A whipping post would be just punishment for a man who beats his wife, hut I certainly object to being treated, as one when I have never once struck my wife during our entire married life,” Caves says.

“I suppose the judge did get tired at seeing me in court and he so forgot himself and the dignity of the bench as to lick me. It would have been bad enough if he licked me, without authority, when I was jailed for intoxication, but to think people got the impression I beat up my wife —that’s terrible”

A session in jail on an intoxication charge is an old story to Caves, who says, “I know I drink too much, just can’t let the stuff alone, but I guess we all have our failings and I never lost a day’s work through being drunk.”

~ Old Friends. ~

Caves has known Judge Zesiger for 20 years or more. When young men they worked together, Caves as boss of the bricklayers, and the judge as a carpenter. Their. positions have changed since then. Zesiger is a dignitary of the municipal court and Caves—well Caves Is still a bricklayer, In the three years that Zesiger has been on the bench, Caves has appeared before him many times, always on a charge of intoxication.

“I talked with Johnny many times, gave him the pledge and tried to help him in every way,” says Zesiger, “but to no avail. His wife often complained to me that he had struck her, so when I saw him in jail again the other day I just took the law into my own hands or the bull by the horns, as the saying, goes, and laid him across my knees and thrashed him. I know I haven’t got a legal leg to stand on, but he deserved a licking and I gave it to him.

“If we had whipping posts in Ohio there’d be less crime. A wife beater is a coward and he’d shrink from a public lashing.”

Prominent citizens and club women who endorsed the judge’s action while under the impression that Caves had actually been arraigned for wife beating are a bit dubious as to the wisdom of the endorsement.

Shortly after Judge Zesiger chastised Caves, another man was brought before him on a charge of beating his wife. The judge turned to the wire, whose swollen blackened eyes were the result of her husband’s cruelty, and handed her the hose which he had used on Caves, telling her to wield it on her husband. She refused, saying she was not physically equal to the task.

[Bonita Witt, “Doesn’t Relish Punishment Since He Wasn’t a Wife Beater After All.” The Sandusky Register (Oh.), Feb. 13, 1927, section 2, p. 1]

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►• You have been told that before the rise of feminism in the 1960s that domestic violence against women was tolerated by society as acceptable behavior and was not taken seriously by police and the courts.

You have been lied to. The people who told you these lies were paid to tell them you. In most cases you paid your own money (taxes and tuition fees) to be lied to.

Here is one of countless pieces of evidence that demonstrate the truth.

►•►• To see more eloquent, vivid evidence proving the lie and giving you the truth, see:

►Society’s Acceptance of Domestic Violence?

►19th Century Intolerance Towards Domestic Violence

► Treatment of Domestic Violence Against Women Before 1960 – this post collects cases classified by the form of punishment or sentencing (whether judicial or through community action)

No, the claim that laws created by males were for the benefit of males is false. Yes, the "Rule of Thumb" myth has been proven to be a marxist-feminist hoax, taking an ancient English common historical notation published in the 18th century and extrapolating it into unsupported claims that 18th and 20th century United States communities, courts and legislatures (laws on the books) were in agreement with the18th century historical notation (Blackstone).

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“[O]nly since the 1970s has the criminal justice system begun to treat domestic violence as a serious crime, not as a private family matter.”

From the entry: “Domestic Violence” on encyclopedia.com

This claim has been proven to be false.

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[871-3/9/21]

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