In this article we are curious to illustrate and contrast some of the ways in which domestic violence has been managed over time and place. To develop this contrast we compare recent (primarily Australian) western material with historical examples taken from early modern England. The focus of this discussion will be how intervention into domestic violence has shifted from a decidedly community-based to an authority-based system of monitoring social relations. We argue, in seeing many respects of this trend reversed, that there are good reasons for a more localized and community-based treatment of Domestic Violence.