David Peterson Mar, What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence Against Wives

Abstract

David Peterson del Mar makes an important contribution to understanding the history of domestic violence in this study, which is based upon the unique records kept by the courts of Oregon since its earliest days. Oregon not only had liberal divorce laws, but its courts maintained detailed written records of divorce cases, including transcripts of witnesses. These records provide only a small sample of the domestic violence that must have occurred, because they are limited to cases in which married persons were the victims and actually sought and obtained a divorce, despite the shame and economic difficulty involved. Nonetheless, review of these records allows Peterson del Mar to describe the nature of domestice violence in a particular context and to do so in the voices of its victims and perpetrators.

Keywords: divorce, domestic violence, history