Sensible Roosevelt: A whipping-post for wife-beaters (1883)
As young NYS Assemblyman, Teddy Roosevelt proposed a bill to inflict corporal punishment on wife beaters.
Elected as a Republican to the New York State Assembly in 1881, at 23 - Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest member of that body. As a reformer, Roosevelt was instrumental in enacting legislation outlawing the manufacture of cigars in tenements (later declared unconstitutional by the courts) and in creating the first state civil service law in the United States. His bill to inflict corporal punishment on wife beaters did not pass.
Title: Sensible Roosevelt--A whipping-post for wife-beaters
Creator(s): Worth, Thomas, 1834-1917, artist
Date Created/Published: 1883 Mar. 3.
Summary: Cover illustration showing man wearing mask whipping another man manacled to whipping post, as a woman with arm in sling looks on.
Library of Congress: LC-USZC4-10086