Gender
A little less than half of the assault cases reported in the Morning Journal and Courier from 1880 to 1900 were male offenders assaulting female victims. Males were typically shown as the aggressors in the stories and the women as needing protection. For instance, a New Haven case from 1880 involving a man named Henry Taylor. He was arrested for repeatedly beating his wife after neighbors reported the sounds of her cries. Taylor was sentenced to two months in jail and fined $15. This sentencing reflects the courts' growing but still very limited attention to domestic violence occurring at the time. Domestic cases usually contained moral language to portray an idea. Male perpetrators were depicted as uncontrolled and female victims as helpless and chaste. Uncontrolled makes you think of them in a negative light, almost like animals.
Males assaulting other males occurred slightly more than half of all the cases I looked at. These were almost always in public. Some of the fights were altercations over business matters. A notable case from 1900 involved two men, Charles Adams and William King. They fought over a debt, which resulted in Adams striking King with a wooden plank. The court sentenced Adams to three months in jail, citing the violent nature of the attack. Unlike domestic violence cases these stories tended to portray both parties as equals rather than portraying them in a certain way.
Over time, the framing of these stories began to shift slightly. Reports of domestic violence by 1900 started to include more follow-up on the legal aspect of the case. This included sentencing of probation or appeals that show a slowly increasing concern about domestic abuse. The wording was still heavily portraying women as victims and men as perpetrators.