Domestic Violence: Non-Lethal Female-on-Male

This topical collection is new and has yet not been much researched by us. Thus this summarizing post is meant only to make it easier to find the articles in this category. Many more cases are to be added.

There are, of course, many collections of lethal female-violence in various categories (as well as categories of domestic violence by women against children and other adult women) already available on Unknown History of MISANDRY. See sidebar.

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1860 – Mrs. Moriarty – Memphis, Tennessee (whip)

A wife is fined for horse-whipping her husband. He is fined for allowing it.

1881 – Mrs. Clarkson – Chicago, Illinois (acid)

Her husband was too handsome and so she was jealous. She corrected the situation by disfiguring his face with acid.

1888 – Mrs. Cochrane – Brooklyn, N.Y. (whip)

A jealous wife horse-whips her husband.

1888 – Mrs. Kluit – Oakland, California

A wife who, with respect to her husband, “had a prevailing hankering to carve out his liver with a knife.” She tried pistols too.

1888 – Mrs. Sterling – Philadelphia, Pa. (whip)

A wife horsewhips her husband in public.

1889 – Catharine Scully – New York, N.Y. (shovel)

A wife who critically injured her husband when she beat him on the head with a shovel.

1895 – Clara Gross – San Francisco, California

A wife deployed, over a period of many years, a dizzying array of assault methods against overly patient her husband. 

1896 – Jennie Dore – Boston, Massachusetts (glass shard)

A wife, separated from her husband, attacked her husband with a shard of plate glass, severing an artery.

1896 – Mrs. Henry – Atlantic City, N. J. (whip)

A jealous wife whips her husband in public. When he slaps her back he is arrested.

1896 – George H. McCluskey – Chicago Illinois (stalker, acid)

A wife whose husband left her stalked him to his new home town and threw acid on him.

1898 – Martha Place – New York, N. Y. (non-lethal, plus lethal)

A wife attacked her husband with an axe, but he survived. Her teenage step-daughter, whom she poisoned and threw acid upon died.

1900 – Mrs. Rigsby – East St. Louis, Missouri

"I am tired of being used as a punching bag for the development of Mrs. Rigsby's biceps," the husband told the Judge.

1900 – Lizzie Rutter – Hackensack, New Jersey

An exasperated judge jailed a wife after her fifth arrest for beating her husband.

1900 – Mrs. Ulter – Hackensack, New Jersey

The first woman to be convicted in Hackensack on the charge of “husband beating.”

1901 – Delaware – state law proposal on equal punishment

A legislative bill is proposed to give women equal punishment for crimes.

1901 – George Lewis – Boston, Massachusetts (hatchet)

Wife bought a hatchet to use on her husband’s head – she had her eye on another man – but he survived the attack.

1902 – “Enid Wife” – Enid, Oklahoma (razor)

Husband-beater slices up preacher with straight razor when he criticizes her for her violence.

1903 – Mrs. Cass – Lexington, Kentucky (whip)

The wife of an elderly war veteran who wanted to spend some of his savings on “having a good time” is told by a judge to give him a horsewhipping to convince him to obey her orders.

1904 – Mrs. Guinan – New York, New York (acid)

She threw acid in husband’s eyes and rubbed it in, causing permanent blindness in the right eye and probably also in the left.

1904 – Sarah Prather – Pueblo, Colorado

Chronic husband beater uses up husband No. 4 (She lied about him being the first). Willing to undergo repeated beatings, hubby nevertheless got tired of the wife bringing her paramours home with her. He got up the nerve to raise a ruckus and landed in jail for his shameless disobedience.

1906 – Emilie Benot – San Francisco, California (whip)

”Of course I horsewhipped my husband and I will do it again …”

1906 – Mrs. Gill – Los Angeles, California (whip)

A wife suspicious her jeweler husband has given away some diamonds prompts a hose-whipping conspiracy.

1906 – Irene Marsh – San Francisco, California (whip)

A wife whips her husband in a theater. She went after the other woman with her gun four years earlier and one year later than the 1906 whipping as well.

1906 – Jennie Cosgrove – Warrensburg, New York (acid)

An estranged wife, who had not seen her husband for two years, used the claim she wanted to see their 9-year-old daughter, to set him up for a vicious acid attack in which she broke a bottle of vitriol over his head and shoulders causing serious injury.

1907 – Eva Browne – New York, N.Y.

A diamond-studded wife thrashed her husband in front of police.

1907 – Margaret Hoppenrath – Detroit, Michigan

A wife who starting punching and kicking her husband four months after their wedding is finally called into divorce court.

1908 – Mrs. Christian – Berkeley, California (whip)

Headline: “Irate Wife Whips Husband In Street”

1908 – Anna Poppert – Chicago, Illinois (scissors)

Wife says, with respect to her treatment of husband: “I have a right to kick him or beat him if I like.”

1908 – Oscar Smith – Shelby, Ohio

Before a large crowd a  wife gave an unresisting husband “a stiff jab in the neck straight from the shoulder as one reads about in championship battles” and “several upper cuts.”

1909 – Josephine Eversich – Newport News, Virginia (bullets, hatchet)

Wife shoots husband giving slight flesh wound. Later the same day she shoots him in leg, shattering the bone. Weeks later, when he can walk, he bails his wife out of jail. But she gets annoyed again and goes at him with a hatchet.

1910 – Lucy Black – Middleburg, Kentucky

Arrested for beating her husband, a wife “goes dead” on police.

1910 – Mrs. Hopkins – Columbus, Ohio

A big man being seriously beaten by little wife in front of a Navy recruiter makes a bad impression on the military man.

1910 – Mary Randolph – Marion, Indiana

Wife arrested on a charge of “husband beating,” whose husband says she is “responsible for his disfigured face.”

1912 – Alice Cross – Milwaukee, Wisconsin

 
A black eye and a pile of wrecked furniture inspires a judge to declare: ‘This husband beating has got to stop.”

1912 – Mary Dubal – Binghampton, New York (a suffrage activist)

A suffrage activist is jailed for husband-beating.
 

1912 – Mrs. Jefferson – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

If husbands are severely punished for wife-beating, why not wives for husband-beating? So asked Frank Jefferson

1912 – Mrs. Masters – Medford, Oregon

A wife tied her husband to a chair, thrashed him with a garden hose, and dragged him into the street, leaving him there.

1914 – Mrs. Seamon – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“Little Ralph Seamon, 1 year old, may pay with a scarred face and the sight of his right eye because his father danced the tango with a girl his mother doesn't like. Mrs. Seamon threw acid at her husband after the dance and it hit the child.”

1916 – Jennie Lodwick – Youngstown, Ohio (torture)

An Ohio wife’s ingeniously varied regimen of husband-torture is revealed.

1921 – Jesse Hassel – Dallas, Texas (acid)

Mrs. Hassel stalked husband and woman and attacked them with acid, seriously burning her about the face, arms, and shoulders.

1921 – Marie Mason – Baltimore, Maryland

A big wife and a little husband: he does not even strike back.

1921 – Henrietta McAvoy – The Bronx, New York (umbrella)

A wife, five months separated, sets up a meeting and viciously attacks, with her umbrella as her weapon, the husband and three policemen, who eventually conquered and arrested her.

1924 – Luella Stuart – Los Angeles, California

Wife beats husband with his wooden leg.

1925 – Madame d’Arpignac – Bordeaux, France (whip)

Husband wins court case and is immediately horse-whipped by his wife.

1925 – Grace Bernice Day – Los Angeles, California (acid)

Grace Bernice Day was one of the most notorious American acid queens. In her first marriage she gave her husband a black eye. In her second she poured acid on her husband.

1927 – Nellie Eickenhorst – New York, N. Y.

Headline: “Whips Her Husband As Crowd Looks On – Wife Beats Man Near Police Headquarters in Mt. Vernon Till He Is Partly Blind.”

1927 – Mrs. Stevenson – Sydney, Australia

A jealous wife beat her husband with a large stick.

1928 – Lillian Donnely – Sydney, Australia

A wife threw her husband “on the ground, and putting her hand inside his mouth, threatened to ‘pull his inside out,’” among other acts of aggression.

1932 – Nettie Harney – Norfolk, Virginia

Wife beats husband on wedding day.

1932 – John A. Meyers – Munhall, Pennsylvania

"She loved me like snakes."

1937 – Tuppie Seymour – New York, N.Y. (dog leash)

Wife beats husband with dog leash in public.

1946 – Inez Amyx – Tacoma, Washington

Judge gives wife permission to batter her husband if he “called her names.”

1953 – Myrtle Devlin – New York, N. Y. (torture)

 
A wife’s 8-hour-long torture of her husband leaves him almost dead, requiring most of his blood to be replaced. “He deserved it,” she said.

1955 – Gerda Thimm – Hamburg, Germany (torture)

A German wife’s ingeniously varied regimen of husband-torture is revealed.

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For more cases see: Domestic Violence: Non-Lethal Female on Male

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[1995-8/13/21]

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