Abuse
Child abuse was not viewed as a huge issue in the nineteenth-century, however, Ambroise Tardieu, the Chair of Legal Medicine in Paris, noticed it and in 1860 published a paper in which he wrote:
Amongst all the literature on wounds and injuries, there is one group which deserves a special category and which so far, has been ignored. This is children are victims of their parents, guardians, and those who exercise authority over them. This is the first paper on the subject and the other authors in legal medicine have not even mentioned it yet. (Knight 137)
Tardieu went on to document 32 cases of child abuse, 18 of which resulted in death. Also included in the paper were details on the variety of injuries Tardieu found throughout his research. They include:
Some of effects of abuse on victims include:
Sexual Abuse/Incest
The issue of child abuse also contains the problem of child sexual abuse, which emerged as "a burning social issue" in Victorian England "and it can be seen as a culmination of Victorian desires, social and psychological, to define and contain both childhood and sexuality" (Jackson 17). Although some parents seemed to fear their children's burgeoning sexuality, others exploited it. While the following statistics come from the United States and not Germany, they still prove that sexual abuse was a big problem. Between the years of 1769 and 1899 there were "more than five hundred different newspaper reports of father-daughter incest" (Sacco 23). That figure of 500 does not take into account any incest that occurred and went unreported. Incest was inflicted by men of all classes and occupations and "newspaper men and judges rarely exhibited any sympathy for men accused of incest (at least in the US), referring to them as ‘unnatural fathers’ and ‘inhuman brutes’’ (Sacco 25). Abuse, whether sexual or not, was merely another way in which discipline and authority functioned in German society, as "physical aggression and its threat remained a central constituent of the power dynamics of interpersonal relations" (Jackson 10). "In ordinary cases [of child sexual abuse], a girl of 15 was more a child than a woman. Trained to obedience, she found it difficult to say ‘no’ to those who spoke with the authority of age and station" (Jackson 17).
Oftentimes, physical abuse went hand and hand with sexual abuse, as one girl who had been been repeatedly raped by her father "had scars from knife wounds he inflicted on her when she tried to resist” (Sacco 31). Also, "victimized girls frequently confessed that they had submitted to the incest and kept it a secret because their fathers had threatened to beat or kill them and other family members - with guns, knives, whips, or clubs - if they did not” (Sacco 31). Another reason girls might keep their abuse a secret was reputation; “some genteel wives and daughters resisted or delayed publicly disclosing the incest because maintaining the appearance of respectability, and the privileges that accompanied it, was important to them as well as their husbands” (Sacco 32). Even for the victims, reputation was an important factor in their futures, as:
Girls who lost their innocence could no longer be deemed ‘children’ and, instead, became social misfits who needed retraining and reforming in a specialist institution. In terms of age, body and appearance they were still children but, in terms of mentality and morality, they were seen as ‘unnatural’ beings, premature adults who had not had the benefits of a ‘healthy’, ‘normal’ development. (Jackson 6-7)
Some effects on rape victims include:
- Depression
- Eating and sleep disorders
- Flashbacks to the event
- Guilt and shame
Corporal Punishment
Corporal punishment was a tricky issue to define in nineteenth-century Germany because it "exposed tensions between the private interests of parents raising their young, the child's interest in his or her bodily integrity, and the collective social interest in well-behaved and orderly children" (Elder 56). Some Germans claimed Zuchtigungsrecht or the right to use corporal punishment. While the issue was never clearly defined by who could dole out punishment and what that punishment could entail, the German civil law ambiguously "granted the right to exercise corporal punishment to parents and those who had state-recognized relationship with the child" (Elder 57). Corporal punishment in Germany was viewed as functioning in two different ways:
The caption for the photo to the above says, "Scenes like the one shown here, in which a village schoolteacher beats a pupil with a cane, were a sad reality for students in the 19th century. Teachers had the “right to apply corporal punishment” [Züchtigungsrecht] and were thus permitted to use beatings and similar measures to discipline their students. (Likewise, masters also had the right to beat their apprentices.) Corporal punishment was particularly pervasive in rural areas, which were less likely to be open to pedagogical reforms. That this scene takes place in a rural elementary school is indicated by the fact that both girls and boys are among the frightened students in this improvised schoolroom. Secondary schools were, as a rule, separated by sex, and the privilege of attending a Gymnasium (a college-preparatory secondary school) was reserved solely for boys until the end of the 19th century. Calls for the abolition of corporal punishment in schools began to be raised (albeit slowly) in the 19th century. Corporal punishment was not legally banned in German schools, however, until the second half of the 20th century. Lithograph by Theodor Hosemann" (Teacher).
Sources:
Elder, Sace. "A Right to Beat a Child? Corporal Punishment and the Law in Wilhelmine Germany." Central European History 47 (2014): 54-75. Web. 6 Oct. 2014.
Jackson, Louise A. Child Sexual Abuse In Victorian England. London: Routledge, 2000. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 3 Oct. 2014.
Hosemann, Theodor. A Teacher Administers a Beating. 1842. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
Kemme, Stefanie, Michael Hanslmeier, and Christian Pfeiffer. "Experience of Parental Corporal Punishment in Childhood and Adolescence and its Effect on Punitiveness." Journal of Family Violence 29.2 (2013). Print.
Knight, Bernard. "The History of Child Abuse." Forensic Science International 30.2 (1986): 135-41. Print.
RUBERG, WILLEMIJN. "Trauma, Body, And Mind: Forensic Medicine In Nineteenth-Century Dutch Rape Cases." Journal Of The History Of Sexuality 22.1 (2013): 85-104. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.
Sacco, Lynn. Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009. Print.
"A Teacher Administers a Beating." German History in Documents and Images. Ed. Jonathan Spurber. Web. 9 Oct. 2014.
Amongst all the literature on wounds and injuries, there is one group which deserves a special category and which so far, has been ignored. This is children are victims of their parents, guardians, and those who exercise authority over them. This is the first paper on the subject and the other authors in legal medicine have not even mentioned it yet. (Knight 137)
Tardieu went on to document 32 cases of child abuse, 18 of which resulted in death. Also included in the paper were details on the variety of injuries Tardieu found throughout his research. They include:
- “The traces left upon the body by the ill-treatment are always remarkable for their multiplicity. Ecchymoses and bruises vary in coloration, attesting to the succession of blows and are found mainly on the face, the limbs and the posterior part of the trunk” (Knight 137)
- “One sees infants thrown to the ground: contusions of all types” (Knight 137).
- “It is impossible to anticipate the form of injuries made with such diversity of instruments. Hands, feet, cords, whips, batons, etc” (Knight 138).
- “Torture pushed the to extreme, consisting of burns with the help of red-hot irons, burning coals and corrosive liquids” (Knight 138)
- “The injuries upon the body often show the imprint of fingers or nails or the object causing the injury” (Knight 138).
- “I have noticed oval red bruises coming from pinching and double bluish bruises formed by a narrow stick” (Knight 138).
- Also, “starvation, sadistic privation, restraint and incarceration, and infection, brought on by neglect and ill-treatment” (Knight 13).
Some of effects of abuse on victims include:
- Depression
- Low self-esteem
- Tendency of abuse towards others
- "It is argued that physical punishment teaches children that it is legitimate and necessary to hit those you love" (Kemme 130).
Sexual Abuse/Incest
The issue of child abuse also contains the problem of child sexual abuse, which emerged as "a burning social issue" in Victorian England "and it can be seen as a culmination of Victorian desires, social and psychological, to define and contain both childhood and sexuality" (Jackson 17). Although some parents seemed to fear their children's burgeoning sexuality, others exploited it. While the following statistics come from the United States and not Germany, they still prove that sexual abuse was a big problem. Between the years of 1769 and 1899 there were "more than five hundred different newspaper reports of father-daughter incest" (Sacco 23). That figure of 500 does not take into account any incest that occurred and went unreported. Incest was inflicted by men of all classes and occupations and "newspaper men and judges rarely exhibited any sympathy for men accused of incest (at least in the US), referring to them as ‘unnatural fathers’ and ‘inhuman brutes’’ (Sacco 25). Abuse, whether sexual or not, was merely another way in which discipline and authority functioned in German society, as "physical aggression and its threat remained a central constituent of the power dynamics of interpersonal relations" (Jackson 10). "In ordinary cases [of child sexual abuse], a girl of 15 was more a child than a woman. Trained to obedience, she found it difficult to say ‘no’ to those who spoke with the authority of age and station" (Jackson 17).
Oftentimes, physical abuse went hand and hand with sexual abuse, as one girl who had been been repeatedly raped by her father "had scars from knife wounds he inflicted on her when she tried to resist” (Sacco 31). Also, "victimized girls frequently confessed that they had submitted to the incest and kept it a secret because their fathers had threatened to beat or kill them and other family members - with guns, knives, whips, or clubs - if they did not” (Sacco 31). Another reason girls might keep their abuse a secret was reputation; “some genteel wives and daughters resisted or delayed publicly disclosing the incest because maintaining the appearance of respectability, and the privileges that accompanied it, was important to them as well as their husbands” (Sacco 32). Even for the victims, reputation was an important factor in their futures, as:
Girls who lost their innocence could no longer be deemed ‘children’ and, instead, became social misfits who needed retraining and reforming in a specialist institution. In terms of age, body and appearance they were still children but, in terms of mentality and morality, they were seen as ‘unnatural’ beings, premature adults who had not had the benefits of a ‘healthy’, ‘normal’ development. (Jackson 6-7)
Some effects on rape victims include:
- Rape was not considered a traumatic experience by doctors and officials in the twentieth-century.
- In the nineteenth-century, "the harm of sexual abuse was located less in [in victim's] psychological self and more in her social and economic standing" (Ruberg 86).
- Some suggest that the "absence of psychology as a scientific discourse meant the lack of any language to articulate psychic help" (Ruberg 86).
- Modern psychologists have identified the following as psychological effects:
- Depression
- Eating and sleep disorders
- Flashbacks to the event
- Guilt and shame
Corporal Punishment
Corporal punishment was a tricky issue to define in nineteenth-century Germany because it "exposed tensions between the private interests of parents raising their young, the child's interest in his or her bodily integrity, and the collective social interest in well-behaved and orderly children" (Elder 56). Some Germans claimed Zuchtigungsrecht or the right to use corporal punishment. While the issue was never clearly defined by who could dole out punishment and what that punishment could entail, the German civil law ambiguously "granted the right to exercise corporal punishment to parents and those who had state-recognized relationship with the child" (Elder 57). Corporal punishment in Germany was viewed as functioning in two different ways:
- "The use of physical compulsion to enforce appropriate conduct necessary to maintain social order" (Elder 60)
- Or physical compulsion "not merely for social order or physical discipline, but for the education of the child" (Elder 60)
The caption for the photo to the above says, "Scenes like the one shown here, in which a village schoolteacher beats a pupil with a cane, were a sad reality for students in the 19th century. Teachers had the “right to apply corporal punishment” [Züchtigungsrecht] and were thus permitted to use beatings and similar measures to discipline their students. (Likewise, masters also had the right to beat their apprentices.) Corporal punishment was particularly pervasive in rural areas, which were less likely to be open to pedagogical reforms. That this scene takes place in a rural elementary school is indicated by the fact that both girls and boys are among the frightened students in this improvised schoolroom. Secondary schools were, as a rule, separated by sex, and the privilege of attending a Gymnasium (a college-preparatory secondary school) was reserved solely for boys until the end of the 19th century. Calls for the abolition of corporal punishment in schools began to be raised (albeit slowly) in the 19th century. Corporal punishment was not legally banned in German schools, however, until the second half of the 20th century. Lithograph by Theodor Hosemann" (Teacher).
Sources:
Elder, Sace. "A Right to Beat a Child? Corporal Punishment and the Law in Wilhelmine Germany." Central European History 47 (2014): 54-75. Web. 6 Oct. 2014.
Jackson, Louise A. Child Sexual Abuse In Victorian England. London: Routledge, 2000. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 3 Oct. 2014.
Hosemann, Theodor. A Teacher Administers a Beating. 1842. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
Kemme, Stefanie, Michael Hanslmeier, and Christian Pfeiffer. "Experience of Parental Corporal Punishment in Childhood and Adolescence and its Effect on Punitiveness." Journal of Family Violence 29.2 (2013). Print.
Knight, Bernard. "The History of Child Abuse." Forensic Science International 30.2 (1986): 135-41. Print.
RUBERG, WILLEMIJN. "Trauma, Body, And Mind: Forensic Medicine In Nineteenth-Century Dutch Rape Cases." Journal Of The History Of Sexuality 22.1 (2013): 85-104. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.
Sacco, Lynn. Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009. Print.
"A Teacher Administers a Beating." German History in Documents and Images. Ed. Jonathan Spurber. Web. 9 Oct. 2014.