Mariticide

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Mariticide (from Latin maritus "husband" + -cide, from caedere "to cut, to kill") means the killing of one's own husband. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. It can also be used in the context of the killing of one's own boyfriend. In current common law terminology, it is used as a gender-neutral term for killing one's own spouse or significant other of either sex.[ citation needed ] Conversely, the killing of a wife or girlfriend is called uxoricide.

Contents

Prevalence

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mariticide made up 30% of the total spouse murders in the United States, data not including proxy murders conducted on behalf of the wife. [1] FBI data from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s found that for every 100 husbands who killed their wives in the United States, about 75 women killed their husbands indicating a 3:4 ratio of mariticide to uxoricide. [2]

English common law

Under English common law it was a petty treason until 1828, and until it was altered under the Treason Act 1790 the punishment was to be strangled and burnt at the stake. [3]

Nineteenth-century conceptualization

Although the word is attested earlier as a learned borrowing, it acquired a distinct analytical sense in 1828, when the English novelist James Henry Lawrence (1773–1840) used it as the title of a chapter in his collection The Etonian out of Bounds; or, Poetry and Prose. [4] Lawrence, the author of the matrilineal utopia The Empire of the Nairs , had argued since 1793 for the abolition of marriage itself.

Drawing on the French and English press, Lawrence compiled lists of spouses killed by their partners between 1819 and 1826, tabulating wives and husbands in separate columns — a gendered breakdown that, according to the historian Anne Verjus, no contemporary attempted. His count came to 45 wives and 26 husbands. Extending his reckoning to the suicides of pregnant unmarried women, to infanticide by abandoned single mothers, and to the murder of mistresses by men unwilling to marry them, he concluded that two thirds of all murders committed in England arose from the "false system of legislation" that was indissoluble marriage, and contrasted this with Protestant Germany, where divorce was permitted and where, he wrote, "I never heard of a husband or wife executed for mariticide". [5]

Lawrence never defined the word, and used it against its etymology, covering both spouses rather than husbands alone. The significance of his usage lies elsewhere: by applying the term to a series of crimes rather than to a kind of crime, he shifted the blame from individual immorality or passion to the institution of marriage itself, which Verjus reads as an early attempt at a social science of marital death. [5] [6]

The term circulated in France in the 1830s among Saint-Simonian circles and advocates of restoring divorce, which had been abolished in 1816; Flora Tristan invoked Lawrence's argument in a petition to the Chamber of Deputies signed in December 1837. It fell out of use once divorce was legalized — in 1857 in England and 1884 in France. [5] Historians of femicide have since contrasted Lawrence's notion with the later concept: where femicide names the killing of a woman because she is a woman, Lawrence's mariticide names the killing of a spouse because they are a spouse, and is blind to the gender asymmetry visible in his own figures. He read the preponderance of murderous husbands not as evidence of male violence but as a consequence of descent: a wife is certain that her children are her own, whereas a husband may have to support "his wife's spurious brood at home, and his own illegitimate offspring abroad", so that marriage is favourable to women "in one respect, and one only". [7] Since on his reasoning those who kill are those with most to gain from escaping an indissoluble union, husbands kill more often — not because they are unhappier in marriage, but because they can never be sure of their line of succession. Verjus notes that he nowhere connects the appropriation of women through marriage, which he denounces elsewhere, with the licence some husbands take to kill. [5]

Notable instances

Historical

Anne Williams burned at the stake for mariticide in Gloucester, 1753 Anne Williams burned at the stake.JPG
Anne Williams burned at the stake for mariticide in Gloucester, 1753

Mythological

In Greek mythology

In Chinese literature

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Understanding Intimate Partner Violence" (PDF). cdc.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 May 2019. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  2. ↑ "Wilson & Daley:Who kills whom in spouse killings". Wiley. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.1992.tb01102.x.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. 1 2 Burgess, Samuel Walter (1825), Historical illustrations of the origin and progress of the passions, and their influence on the conduct of mankind, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, pp. 134–135
  4. ↑ James Lawrence, "On Mariticide", in The Etonian out of Bounds; or, Poetry and Prose, London, Hunt and Clarke, 1828, pp. 171–186.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Verjus, Anne (2025). Abolir le patriarcat: l'utopie féministe de James Henry Lawrence (1773-1840) (in French). Saint-Étienne: Presses universitaires de Saint-Étienne. pp. 64–65, 424–429. ISBN   978-2-86272-793-6.
  6. ↑ Verjus, Anne (2022). "Quand le mariage tue. Le divorce face aux mariticides au XIXe siècle". Eigensinn (in French) (1). ISSN   2795-8906.
  7. ↑ James Lawrence, "On Mariticide", op. cit., p. 180.
  8. ↑ Stronach, George (1892). "Kincaid, Jean"  . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 31. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 123.
  9. ↑ Bicks, Caroline (2017). Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare's England. Taylor & Francis. p. 106. ISBN   978-1-351-91766-7.
  10. ↑ Durston, Gregory J. (2014). Wicked Ladies: Provincial Women, Crime and the Eighteenth-Century English Justice System. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 143. ISBN   978-1-4438-6599-9.
  11. ↑ Stateline Victoria
  12. ↑ "HTML Document: Regina v Knight [2001] NSWSC 1011 revised – 29 January 2002". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016.
  13. ↑ Knight loses appeal for skinning partner – Breaking News – National – Breaking News
  14. ↑ "Texas woman who ran over cheating husband freed from prison". KEYE. Associated Press. 11 May 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2025.
  15. ↑ Kettler, Sara (21 February 2025). "Who Is Melanie Slate McGuire, the 'Suitcase Killer'?". A&E. Retrieved 18 April 2025.
  16. ↑ "What made the preacher's wife kill her husband?". ABC News. Retrieved 18 April 2025.
  17. ↑ "Woman Who Smothered 2 Sons, Killed Husband With Sword Sentenced To Death - CBS Los Angeles". www.cbsnews.com. 19 January 2012. Retrieved 28 October 2026.
  18. ↑ Fraga, Kaleena (3 November 2024). "Jodi Arias Fatally Stabbed Her Ex-Boyfriend 27 Times — Now, She Leads An Eventful Life Behind Bars". All That's Interesting. Retrieved 18 April 2025.
  19. ↑ "Friends say they warned Travis Alexander that Jodi Arias was dangerous for months before she killed him". ABC News. Retrieved 18 April 2025.
  20. ↑ Ferrarin, Elena (23 November 2022). "The Nancy Brophy Story: Killing a Husband Goes From Fiction to Reality". A&E. Retrieved 18 April 2025.

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