Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis

by Alexis Coe

  Hundreds of spectators milled around outside, and accounts of their behavior varied, as always. Some of the newspapers praised the crowd for their respectful behavior: Eyes averted, hats in hand, and tones hushed. But other accounts described a rowdier scene, with gawkers so eager for a closer look that they tore the pickets off the church fence. All of the papers agreed that the overflow gathered outside of the church filled the adjacent yard to capacity, and the rest huddled outside of the houses that lined the block—including Lillie Johnson’s home. As the mourning procession moved on to nearby Elmwood Cemetery, many more joined the crowd. They watched from afar as Freda’s casket was lowered into the ground and covered with flowers, the grief-stricken Wards and Volkmars standing nearby. After the reverend spoke for the last time, members of the choir once again struck up hymns.

  In the sweet by and by, they sang, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.

  DELICATE HANDS, HORRIBLE DEED

  ALICE MITCHELL WAS EXPECTED to make the briefest of appearances before Judge DuBose on February 1, 1892, but the Shelby County Courtroom was nonetheless bursting with bodies. Seats were quickly filled, and those who were left standing leaned against the interior walls, while others hoping to eventually wedge their way inside crowded the doorway. And though they had absolutely no chance of hearing anything of worth, and would likely get but a fleeting glimpse of the murderess as she passed by, the late arrivals lined the hallways and stairwells, and some even huddled outside, their breath visible in the cool, still air.

  They all knew how Alice would answer the only question asked of her that day. They also knew that no evidence related to the crime would be seen, and that there was no chance of getting a sample of the most coveted of documents: the love letters that were being tightly guarded by both the prosecution and defense.

  But this court date had little to do with facts, or even with the plea itself. This was the first real public performance, Act I, Scene I of a drama that would unfold for months in the theater of the courtroom.

  It had been exactly one week since the murder, and even though the story was plastered across most national newspapers every single day, the information had grown stale. This was not for lack of effort. The influx of out-of-town journalists from big urban dailies crowded the local inns and boarding houses where they took meals and slept but a few hours. They spent the rest of their time racing around town, attempting to drum up whatever news they could, but there had been so little to work with. The public had yet to see all the actors in this production—the Mitchells and the Wards and the Johnsons, the defense and prosecution—gathered together in one room. All who were present in court that first day in February intended to make the most out of the mere minutes Alice would stand before Judge Julius DuBose. Having repeatedly quoted statements that Alice had supposedly made, the public would finally, albeit briefly, hear her voice.

  Of course, there was always the hope she would put her alleged insanity on full display. Ideally, Alice would launch into a florid and picturesque manic episode, but spectators and journalists would settle for a glint of the eye, the slightest glimmer of madness. The opposing camp wished for any visual proof that she was a cold, vile, but completely sane killer.

  The audience must have been disappointed, then, with Alice’s brief appearance in the courtroom. Gantt and Wright fielded most of the questions while she sat beside them in silence, her face shrouded by a thick, black veil. Some interpreted this as an act of mourning, while others nodded in approval at the modesty of the Southern lady. Either way, the moment she lifted her veil and formally entered a plea of “present insanity,” Alice became a public figure, in the flesh.42

  The Commercial, the Memphis-based newspaper most critical of the insanity plea, thought that Alice had “an expressionless face, with low forehead, eyes together, and blotches that robs [sic] her of any pretense to a fair complexion.”43 They quoted a “well known priest” who deemed Alice “strong but not masculine,” although her head had given him pause. This priest was quite sure, despite having only inspected her from afar, that her veiled head indeed contained a “disordered” mind.44

  The Appeal Avalanche, sympathetic to the defense, painted a very different picture. Whereas the Commercial described her face (low forehead, close eyes, blotchy skin) in a way that was meant to make her seem unattractive, the Appeal Avalanche definitively concluded “Alice Mitchell is quite a pretty one.” In its estimation, she was not “expressionless,” but rather respectful and demure, her “large blue-grey eyes looked out quite complacently towards the judge.” While the Commercial source characterized Alice as “strong,” the Appeal Avalanche found its own unnamed witness to exclaim, “What delicate hands to commit such a horrible deed!” In a further effort to portray Alice as a non-menacing young lady from a respectable family, the newspaper spent some time detailing her distinctly feminine dress, from head to toe, including “a tan and brown checked ulster with a short cape . . . black Oxford shoes with little heels.”45

  Alice was not the only young woman submitting a plea that day. She was accompanied by Lillie Johnson, whose decision to join Alice for a buggy ride just one week earlier could now lead her to the gallows. Lillie pled not guilty, but the press hardly seemed surprised. Belief in her innocence was almost universal—with the notable exception of the attorney general. Peters’s insistence that Lillie remain in a jail cell with an admitted murderess, one who many believed to be insane and perverted, was viewed as yet another strike against the prosecution’s handling of the case.

  But for the sake of news copy, Lillie proved to be a valuable courtroom counterpoint to Alice. Just as Freda had been described as far more girlish, Lillie displayed the kind of fragile grace that perfectly suited Victorian conceptions of femininity: “[Miss Mitchell] stood as rigid as a statue . . . Miss Johnson would have sunk to the floor but for the support of her father’s arm.”

  THE MITCHELLS, WARDS, AND JOHNSONS were not exempt from such intense scrutiny. The public often rendered its judgments along gender lines that ignored, or even erased, the distinction between the defense and prosecution.

  In this story, the fathers were stalwart characters, valiant protectors of women who faltered without their guidance, and flourished at their behest. Even when men from the Mitchell, Ward, or Johnson families were driven to rare displays of emotion—breaking societal expectations of the stouthearted, gallant Southern man—they still received positive reviews. The men, after all, had not failed to perform their duties. The home was the haven fathers returned to after a day out in the world doing men’s work, while women remained near the hearth. It was the guardian women, the mothers and older sisters, whose responsibilities began and ended in the domestic sphere; they were the ones who had fallen short. After the failure of their wives and daughters, the men had no choice but to hold strong as lionhearted fathers and husbands, shoring up their families during exceptionally trying times.

  These men—George Mitchell, Thomas Ward, and J.M. Johnson—were presented as not merely blameless, but almost victims themselves, sympathetically called the “three sorrowing fathers.”46

  George Mitchell—father of the confessed murderess, husband to a purportedly unstable wife—was a retired businessman described as being “well suited to leisure.” Before the trial interrupted his life of ease and recreation, Uncle George had a reputation for being a gamesman with a particular fondness for guns. From the moment he turned Alice over to the warden’s care, George had captured the sympathy of the nation, and most certainly of his fellow Memphians. They saw him as a fine man who was doing all he could, having hired the best lawyers around—which may have also meant the most expensive. George was risking the entire Mitchell family’s financial future to care for his youngest child, tainted as she was through the matrilineal line. The Mitchells were all beleaguered, but it was only George who was described as having worn the stress on his face. He had aged so rapidly, reporters observed, that he now appeared but a “poor old man.”


  Thomas Ward, whose wife and, as of a week prior, youngest daughter, had predeceased him—both dead well before their time—was regarded with the kind of respect naturally granted to the bereaved. Even so, the papers could not resist painting his grief in shades of gender. Upon hearing of Freda’s death, it was reported that Thomas was “almost unmanned” by the loss.47 But like all displays of emotion by men, the moment passed decorously, as it must, and it was his background of consummate manly efforts that defined his public persona: his attempts to better his family’s fortune in Golddust, to leave behind his job as a machinist at the Memphis Fertilizing Company and try his luck as a merchant and planter, all while making sure his daughters were tended to by his eldest, were regularly lauded.

  Even Lillie’s father, J.M. Johnson, whose name was rarely mentioned in the press, was given his due. Reporters spoke of him with admiration and reverence for the way in which he doted on his daughter, and consistently praised him for the nights he spent at the jail, keeping an eye on his Lillie. Much like the rest of the historical actors involved in the case, few personal details were offered about J.M. Johnson, including his profession; it was never named by the press, though a Memphis city directory listed his occupation as painter.48

  In newspaper articles, however, the maternal figures were treated with little regard, or worse: they were often depicted as teetering on the edge of insanity. Though their supposed instability was sometimes explained by the stress of the murder, more often than not, the women were portrayed as being plagued by long-term “hysterical” tendencies. Which is to say, the murder itself was tacitly blamed on the folly and feminine ineptitude of the women who should have been responsible.

  It did not help that Isabella Mitchell, Alice’s mother, rarely made public appearances. Newspapers noted that her only outings seemed to be long visits downtown with Alice, where she would ignore the press vying for her attention as she entered and exited the jail.49 Despite her reticence to engage, Isabella was spoken of often, her mental history was discussed in newspapers and in the courtroom; the defense would painstakingly review her hospitalizations in order to establish hereditary history, a requirement of the “present insanity” plea.

  Freda was murdered a decade after her mother died, at which point her eldest sister, Ada Volkmar, became her surrogate mother. Although Ada was credited as the only person from either family to uncover the elopement in time to stop it, she was not commended for her foresight or her decisive action. No one seemed very interested in the steps she took to intervene, or the maternal authority she wielded over Freda. With just one disastrous exception—the last note she sent before supposedly quitting Memphis—Freda had cut off all contact with Alice, just as Ada had commanded. And it was Ada who informed Isabella of Alice and Freda’s plans, and likewise implored her to impose a similarly tough stance. But the press rewarded Ada’s diligence by vaguely describing her as “not well,” a condition that was ironically the effect of the murder far more than, as the newspapers insinuated, an underlying cause of it. She rarely appeared in court.

  Mrs. Johnson, Lillie’s mother, was yet another woman said to suffer from “nervous prostration,” and was thus confined to her room. Similarly, Mrs. Kimbrough, still playing host to the Wards, was said to have been experiencing heart trouble from all of the excitement the case had brought into her life. In the usual custom, the women’s first names were not mentioned.

  In other words, the matrons were portrayed as incapacitated or silent or, most commonly, both. The young women, particularly Jo Ward, were held in high esteem as long as they demonstrated the kind vulnerability expected of women in the Victorian era.50 And of course, the prettier, the better.

  REPORTERS WERE NO DOUBT GLAD TO SEE Judge Julius DuBose, a notoriously bombastic character in Memphis, sitting on the bench. He was both intolerant and despotic, a misogynist and avowed bigot whose colorful interludes would earn their fair share of space in the dailies.51 The son of a wealthy planter, Judge DuBose was an early leader in the Tennessee Ku Klux Klan, and former editor of the Public Ledger.52, 53 He was elected to the criminal court in 1886, but his heavy-handed tactics earned him plenty of enemies. Impeachment proceedings against him would begin in 1893, a year after Alice was arrested for Freda’s murder. In fact, it would be Luke Wright, one of Alice’s own attorneys, who would prosecute Judge DuBose before the state senate on an impressive tally of thirty-four counts. He would be impeached and convicted twice—for failing to recognize a writ of habeas corpus and overstepping his authority—but his position was eventually restored.

  MEMBERS OF THE JURY had yet to be selected, but the press was not deterred from spirited conjecture. No juror who called himself a Southern gentleman, declared the Commercial, would indict a young, white lady from a good family. Even though the evidence was substantial and Alice’s guilt “indisputable,” the Commercial bemoaned the possibility of any judgment against this poor young woman of good standing. The tone of its coverage seemed to criticize—but was actually applauding, in advance—the Memphians who would eventually determine the fate of the nineteen-year-old woman. If there was one thing the nation should know about the men of Shelby County, the Commercial assured readers, it was that “their chivalry exceeds their sense of justice.”54

  The jurors’ identities were still unknown, but their skin color and gender were not: The jury box was guaranteed to be stocked with white men. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 may have stated that “no citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court in the United States, or of any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” but by 1883, inconsistent state rulings would culminate in a landmark Supreme Court verdict. The Justices overturned the law eight-to-one, ensuring people of color were denied the right to participate in the judicial sphere.55

  What would happen if women could serve as jurors? The Commercial hypothesized that an all-female jury—by which they surely meant white women—would be free of the chivalrous regard expected of their male counterparts, and would thus find Alice Mitchell guilty. But, of course, this was a theoretical scenario; in 1892, women were barred from the polls, and even after the right to vote was finally won in 1920, states continued to deny them the opportunity to serve on juries. The very presence of women in the Shelby County courtroom was a peculiarity of the case, and while it was considered a challenging dose of modernity, an anomaly tolerated because the unusual saga was understood to have moral implications.56 Gender rules, it was thought, could be relaxed for a hearing that would ultimately reinforce them.

  THERE WERE CONCERNED but vastly outnumbered Memphians who implored the papers to pay less attention to the case, hoping it would allow for a speedier trial.

  It is most devoutly to be wished that the trial of Alice Mitchell and Lillie Johnson may take place at a very early date, and the case removed from public consideration. Its prolongation would be deplorable. It is one of those cases which appeals strongly to morbid sentimentality and which tends unduly to excite disease of weak minds.57

  But the trial was of the utmost importance to the nation for reasons far greater than entertainment—though it was certainly an added attraction. All the major mass media publications flocked to Memphis for the first time because the Mitchell case was not just about two young women, same-sex love, murder, or even lunacy—it was about American modernity.

  In the 1890s, the predominant national identity of whiteness—one that had been disrupted by the Civil War, Reconstruction, and an influx of Chinese and Mexican immigrants—was a narrative more uncertain than ever before.58 Whiteness was an inherently unstable ideology, constantly threatened by economic and political upheaval, and now Alice provided yet another perceived menace to the existing narrative: a gendered threat to white men’s authority, challenging their power across the spectrum—particularly in the domestic sphere. This was a battle for their own homes.

  The
kind of violence Alice had displayed with her father’s razor was a “masculine” act as much as it was a privilege of white men. If anyone else was seizing it for themselves—as the nascent suffrage movement, demands for broader political enfranchisement, calls for fair wages and greater opportunities suggested—the traditional power base of white America was in peril. And women were just the beginning. Soon all races and classes would follow. For many white men, the bloody developments in Memphis illustrated the dangers they collectively faced. It served as a dire call to claim what belonged to them, and to which they were duty bound, by natural and civil laws, to protect.

  ATTENDANCE EVEN GREATER THAN OPENING DAY

  LILLIE HAD BEEN FRIENDS with Alice for years, but in the months before the murder, it was as if she hardly knew her. When Freda cut off contact with Alice, Jo had done the same with Lillie, but her exile came with no explanation. Without any knowledge of Alice and Freda’s foiled elopement, the sudden severing of friendship with the Wards, especially with Jo, had been a great loss for Lillie—and a baffling one. She was confused and hurt, but her close-knit family offered solace, as did other friends. At that point, Lillie was far more concerned about Alice, who seemed altogether changed.

  But nothing in Alice’s dark and brooding moods could have prepared Lillie for the events of that late afternoon in January. She had no idea that, while she lingered behind in the buggy, an old friend was being murdered at the hands of another.

  “Oh! What have you done to her?” Lillie cried from the buggy as Alice barreled up the hill.