Back in the 1970s, a very prominent feminist fabricated the idea that wife beating used to be legal, and this idea essentially exploded right after that. Not only is it commonly used in feminist circles as evidence that women were uniquely oppressed in history, but variations of this myth have made their way into popular culture as well. It is of course not true. In fact, as near as anyone can tell, wife beating wasn't just illegal, but was widely condemned as one of the worst crimes that anyone could commit. This is true in Europe all the way back to at least Roman times.

Now it is technically true that wife beating wasn't specifically made illegal in the US until the early 1900s (on a state by state basis). But it was illegal under regular assault laws. And of course, by the same token, husband beating wasn't "technically" illegal until then, either*. Husbands and wives were still punished for engaging in domestic violence though. And there's evidence of this all the way back to the colonial era in America. More than that, just like in Europe, wife beating was looked down on quite severely in comparison to other crimes.

*It might actually be true that husband beating was outlawed later than wife beating was. The sources I found on this don't go into detail, so I haven't been able to confirm this. But it would be interesting to find out if the earliest DV laws in the United States were gender specific, and initially only protected wives and not husbands.

Even though legal history strongly suggests that wife beating has always been condemned, it's still hard to tell how common it was. For example, were women ashamed to speak up when their husbands beat them? The evidence suggests that they weren't. But certainly we might be skeptical of how things were handled 300+ years ago during the evil rein of the patriarchy, right?

Well one team of researchers analyzed court cases in London between 1680 and 1720 and found that one third of assault cases had women as the primary perpetrator and women tended to assault family members, and even close neighbors, the most.

Further evidence of court records from the Westminster Quarter Sessions 1680- 1720 shows women prosecuting their male partners for assaults in a manner which was empowering and provided access to legal redress against abusive partners (Hurl-Eamon, 2005). These records also show that women were considerably violent themselves, given that they were before the court as perpetrators of violence in approximately one third of assault cases. Accused women were more likely to have assaulted family or household members or neighbors than others (George, 2002, 2003).

From:

George, M. J. (2007). The" Great Taboo" and the Role of Patriarchy in Husband and Wife Abuse. International Journal of Men's Health, 6(1).

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1855/f217b082603d0ab37ea80c4741fceb8a4a23.pdf

Referencing:

Hurl-Eamon, J. (2005). Gender and petty violence in London, 1680-1720. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.567.4426&rep=rep1&type=pdf

It's also important to consider that men have a tendency to under-report their abuse compared to women, and that women are less likely to be arrested and prosecuted after committing a crime compared to men. So those numbers likely represent a minimum prevalence of violence. And if anything, it would skew more towards men being victims, and women being perpetrators, than what the data suggests.

In fact, in at least one study on sexual assault, it was found that men were 9 times less likely to report their abuse compared to women.

I'm not sure what the numbers look like for domestic violence, but court records already seem to imply that domestic violence was not nearly the gendered crime that some people assume. And that's even before you start looking at things from that angle.

In addition, at least one author by the name of Ernest Belfort Bax seems to think that husband beating was a serious problem in the UK around the turn of the 20th century, just 150 years later. He made this observation in 1896 and even talked about how laws in Britain were defined in such a way that a man who assaulted a woman was given a punishment 10 times worse than when a woman assaulted a man. There was also a widespread media bias (in the newspapers) against men whenever domestic violence was brought up and publicized.

At any rate, it doesn't look like women were constantly being abused by men during that time period. At least, it wasn't any more common than husband abuse was. Men may be stronger than women, but women have always had social favor over men. Harming a woman has always been seen as worse than harming a man. And a man's duty to his wife went above and beyond a woman's duty to her husband, a fact that might have even helped encourage husband abuse.

The idea that husbands had free rein to assault their wives or treat them like property is simply not supported by the historical evidence. And in fact, we might be asking the wrong questions here. The problem of women assaulting men appears to have been a serious issue in its own right. And societal biases against men and male victims may stretch back throughout most of history.