It has often been claimed that wife-beating in nineteenth-century America was legal… Actually, though, several states passed statutes legally prohibiting wife-beating; and at least one statute even predates the American Revolution. The Massachusetts Bay Colony prohibited wife-beating as early as 1655. The edict states: “No man shall strike his wife nor any woman her husband on penalty of such fine not exceeding ten pounds for one offense, or such corporal punishment as the County shall determine.”
https://www.debunker.com/texts/ruleofthumb.html
