Love Tap Legality

Saturday, December 23, 2006

A man was sentenced in a Fargo court on this day in 1903 upon the instigation of his newlywed wife. Charles Hockeins was convicted of assault and battery after his wife testified that the man had chased her with a large butcher knife and thrown her over their gasoline stove. Mr. Hockeins claimed that he had only given his wife “a few light love taps” and that his wife was much too old to be involved in a “scrape of this character“. The judge, Justice Ryan, believed otherwise and sentenced the man to ten days in jail after the unemployed defendant told him that he would have work after the first of the year. Addressing the defendant, Justice Ryan told him, “I’ll give you ten days in the county jail, which will keep you out of mischief until you are ready to go to work.”

Source:
The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican (Evening ed.). December 23, 1903: p. 8.

–Jayme L. Job