On March 24, 1880, the legislature approved an act to prohibit any person from using "abusive or insulting language in the presence of another, intending thereby to insult such other person or persons with the intention to provoke an assault." Persons found guilty of this misdemeanor were to be fined twenty dollars. If the offender was a male and the person injured a female, the fine was to be increased to fifty dollars.
Although the Evans-Hill feud began with angry words and the Howard-Turner feud ostensibly began because, as the Howards asserted, a Turner "spoke badly to Mama," this law did little to stem the later violence that erupted in Kentucky's eastern counties. Above is a group portrait of men and women family members of the Hatfield family who participated in the famous long-standing and bloody feud in the late 19th century between the Hatfield and McCoy clans of West Virginia and Kentucky. Hatfield Photo Group, Kentucky Historical Society Collections.
