The Silenced Pain

This article discusses domestic violence in the UK between 1945 and 1970 before the most recent burst of the women's movement. Drawing on the findings of a small-scale retrospective research study, the authors outline the position of women in the new welfare state of the period and discuss employment, marriage, divorce, and attitudes to motherhood in relation to domestic violence. With attention to class and race factors, the paper goes on to describe the lack of services on all levels for women experiencing domestic violence (particularly perhaps as regards housing and the police), and the severe impact of such violence on women at the time, from which there were few avenues of escape. It identifies the pride and resistance of many interviewees and the long-term tragedy which has imbued their lives-lives which, even now, so very many years later, are deeply scarred by hidden pain. The research study found a widespread and enduring silence about domestic abuse in the post-war period and the paper is an exploratory piece to assist in breaking that silence. It aims to provide a voice for the women interviewees, now reaching the end of their lives, many of whom have spoken about the violence which they experienced for the first time, and to pay public tribute to their bravery and suffering and strength

Abusive relationship · Criminology · Domestic violence · Poison control · Political science · Pride · Psychiatry · Silence · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Law · Medicine · Psychology

• Smoke screen or leap forward

  Open Access•Gill Hague•Critical Social Policy•1997

  Incluir item

• Ruth Ellis and Public Contestation of the Death Penalty

  Open Access•L Seal•The Howard Journal of Criminal…•2011

  Incluir item

• Me Too? Re-encountering youth experiences of sexual violence in post-war England from the vantage point of later life

  Open Access•Laura Fenton, Penny Tinkler•Contemporary British History•2023

  Incluir item

• Interviewer

  Deborah Lee, Deborah A Lee et al.•Journal of Gender Studies•2016

  Incluir item

• Words that Strike and Words that Comfort

  Jarmila Mildorf•Journal of Gender Studies•2005

  Incluir item

• Patterns in the Telling

  Open Access•Jill Reynolds•Sociological Research Online•2006

  Incluir item

• Heroes of their own lives

  Linda Gordon•Heroes of their own lives•1988

  Incluir item

• Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914–1999

  Open Access•Martin Pugh•Women and Women's Movement in…•2000

  Incluir item

• Violence Against Wives

  R Emerson Dobash, Russell P Dobash•Violence against wives•1979

  Incluir item

• Women, Violence and Social Change

  Martin D Schwartz, R Emerson Dobash et al.•Women, violence, and social change•2003

  Incluir item

• The Ties That Bind (Routledge Revivals)

  Carol Smart•Ties That Bind•2013

  Incluir item

• Sexual Divisions and Society

  Chris Middleton, Diana Leonard Barker et al.•British Journal of Sociology•1978

  Incluir item