Why are you ignoring a primary, contemporary and authoritative source that clearly says the laws of England 20 years before the events in the movie did not permit wife-beating in preference to ONE modern, secondary source that says what one judge might have ruled and a source which quotes that secondary source?
Blackstone's Commentaries are widely accepted as definitive of the English common law at the time and yet you seem to prefer to believe modern secondary sources...
Why? Is it really that hard to give up your myth?
This is not about whether husbands might have treated wives badly or even if they got away with it. I have no doubt they did. It is about what the laws of England permitted at the time. Blackstone clearly says they did not permit wife beating - with a thumb-sized stick or otherwise. His restatement of the law is considered highly accurate and reliable, being referenced repeatedly by superior courts even today, as the law of England at the time.
Even if a court did find it permissable, it is still not determinative of what the law was at the time. Judges frequently make mistakes, that is what courts of appeal are for.
"They who... give up... liberty to obtain... safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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