Violence, gender, and intemperance in early national Connecticut

In 1815, Middletown, Connecticut resident Peter Lung beat his wife Lucy to death after both engaged in a two-day bout of drinking. In succeeding trial s, Lung was sentenced to death, and eventually executed in 1816. Publicity surrounding the case reveals much about changing notions of violence, gende r, and intemperance. In particular, the varying ways in which the intereste d parties depicted Lucy Lung and her drinking illustrates a trend toward vi ewing woman as innately moral beings who were often victimized by male viol ence. Lung's defense of his actions emphasized his wife's drunkenness as a cause of her death, and harked back to colonial conceptions of woman as car nal and sinful. The legal and clerical establishment downplayed Lucy's inte mperance, employing images of woman victimized by male drunkenness that wou ld become dominant in the antebellum temperance movement.