III.

Rape and Riot

Domestic violence has been notoriously under-reported; so too has rape. Male rape existed, but appears almost never to have been reported. Sodomy was almost always a capital crime, and those found guilty were generally execrated by the crowds present at their execution or while they stood in the pillory. In early modern France, Spain, and Italy the gang rape of a female appears to have been a demonstration of virility and masculine honour, and a rite of passage for the sons of urban artisans and journeymen. Few of the offenders were ever punished. In most European states rape became a capital crime in the early modern period. However, many early jurists did not conceive of the offence as one committed against a person: since women were principally perceived legally in their relationship to a man, female rape was either an offence against property or an offence against parental authority. It was rare for anyone to be executed for rape unless the victim was particularly young and the crime particularly brutal. Indeed, law books could even suggest that while an assault on a woman of good character might merit death, a master’s abuse of a servant girl might be assuaged with a money transaction. Even in the 20th century the dishonour of rape and the prospect of the intrusive investigation of a female victim’s sex life by male police in private, and by male defence lawyers in public court, probably dissuaded many from reporting an attack.

In the same way that violence against wives, children, and servants could receive a degree of popular sanction, so too could some forms of riot. Food shortages, high prices, enforced military recruitment, and some taxes, could all generate, or at least contribute to, serious protest. The Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789, when concerns about food shortages were rife and when food prices in Paris had reached a peak. The authorities could also label as riot the folkloric demonstrations that commonly took place in rural communities, against individuals who had offended local mores such as the husband who let himself be cuckolded or beaten by his wife, and the old man who took a young bride. But riot has never been significant in the statistics of crime, and nor has political crime, from sedition to the more serious treason. However, and for obvious reasons, political crime, especially in its more spectacular manifestations such as the wave of anarchist and socialist bombings and assassinations at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, generates far more publicity than the more common offences of petty theft and assault.