She Had Been Patient Long Enough
A Seattle bricklayer’s wife takes him to municipal court after a payday spree turns violent, and a judge suspends his sentence.
Mary McDermott is a small woman, but when she makes up her mind there is fun ahead. It was evident that she had made up her mind to do something when she walked into the municipal court yesterday afternoon to prosecute her husband, Thomas McDermott, a bricklayer employed at the university, for assault and battery. She said that she had often threatened to prosecute him for beating her, but had always been persuaded to let the matter pass. Last payday, however, McDermott came home and gave her part of his wages and then went out on a spree. After he had spent what money he had he came back for what she had, and beat her.
McDermott made a sorry defense, claiming that all he did was to hit her with a newspaper. The judge found him guilty, but suspended sentence until today.
“She said that she had often threatened to prosecute him for beating her, but had always been persuaded to let the matter pass.”
Domestic violence was often treated as a private matter in the 1890s, and the paper’s light opening tone sits awkwardly beside the account of a woman beaten after payday. The case still reads as a reminder of how economic control and violence can arrive together, and how much depends on whether a court takes a victim seriously.
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