Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis

by Alexis Coe

  Taylor, Peter. Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

  Tolnay, Stewart E., and E. M. Beck. A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

  Tuke, Hack. A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, 2 vols. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co., 1892.

  Ullman, Sharon R. Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

  Walker, Hugh. “A Crime of Passion? The Day the Doctor Shot the General.” The Nashville Tennessean Magazine, July 14, 1963.

  Walkowitz, Judith R., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

  Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer, 1966): 141-74.

  Wrenn, Lynette Boney. Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis: Elite Rule in a Gilded Age City. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998.

  Young, J. P. The Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee. Knoxville: H.W. Crew & Co., 1912.

  INTRODUCTION

  1 My research began with the following works, all of which pointed me in different directions. Their approaches influenced my own, whether I agreed or disagreed, and I’m grateful to Lisa J. Lindquist, who wrote the article “Images of Alice: Gender, Deviancy, and a Love Murder in Memphis,” Journal of History of Sexuality, no. 1 (Winter, 1995): 30-61; Lillian Faderman briefly discussed the case in Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendships and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1988); Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History (New York: Plume, 1992)

  CHAPTER 1: I DON’T CARE IF I’M HUNG!

  2 As I mentioned in the introduction, I looked for agreement among multiple newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts, and courtroom documents, and then chose to quote and add description where I found agreement or obvious disagreement with what was being quoted versus described. The same articles from 1892 (and a few from the years that followed), and the hypothetical case, were mined for information that was then distributed throughout the book.

  3 These events, and all that follow, have been reconstructed from newspaper articles and testimony.

  CHAPTER 2: THE GREAT DRAMA

  4 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

  5 Of course, I am not suggesting that marriage would have fixed their issues. On the contrary, I point to their ongoing issues of jealousy and infidelity throughout the book. I am simply suggesting that the only narrative that Alice might have found solace in was one in which she and Freda made a home together, but I suspect the reality would have proven difficult, to say the least. Vincent Astor, the local historian I mention in the Introduction, said to me, “I fear what would have happened if they made it to St. Louis.” I, too, have often wondered how these two sheltered young women would have fared out in the world, far from their families and unable to contact them. Would Freda’s infidelity have disappeared, as promised, with marriage? Would Alice’s jealousy subside, regardless of whether or not Freda’s behavior changed? What would have happened if Alice failed to make a convincing Alvin J. Ward? How would they have supported themselves? What if Alvin disappointed Freda? Would she have called her family or sought help? Was Alice’s violence inevitable? What if their families found them in St. Louis? These are just some of the questions that come to mind—and they enter my mind quite often.

  6 The Higbee School for Young Ladies. Annual Catalog. Memphis and Shelby County Room, Memphis Public Library.

  7 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1, (Summer, 1966): pp. 141-74.

  8 Robert A. Sigafoos, Cotton Row to Beale Street: A Business History of Memphis (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1979), 78.

  CHAPTER 3: MR. AND MRS. ALVIN J. WARD

  9 “Still in Doubt,” Memphis Commercial, July 20, 1892.

  10 Small changes have been made to glaring errors in reprints of the letters throughout the book, but otherwise spelling errors and inconsistencies have been left in. The letters that appear throughout the book were quoted and reprinted in the articles “Still in Doubt,” July 20, 1892, 1; “Silly Letters,” July 21, 1892; “None But Freda,” July 22, 1892; “Myra Is a Myth,” July 23, 1892; Memphis Commercial, and “Letters in Demand,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 16, 1892.

  CHAPTER 5: I THOUGHT YOU WERE A LADY

  11 Cornelia Ward, Freda’s mother, was also buried in an unmarked grave in Elmwood in 1882.

  12 Page 7 of Chapter 14: The Hypothetical Case.

  CHAPTER 7: EROTOMANIA

  13 For more on Gantt and Wright’s role as community leaders after the yellow fever outbreaks, see J.P. Young, The Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee (Knoxville: H.W. Crew, 1912). For more on Alice’s lawyers, see Paul Coppock’s Memphis Memoirs (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1980). There was another lawyer at the defense table, Pat Winters, but he served only as an advisor and did not speak.

  14 Isabella Mitchell’s hospitalizations will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 14: The Hypothetical Case.

  15 For more about Memphis’s newspaper publishing industry, see Paul Coppock, Memphis Sketches (Memphis: Friends of Memphis and Shelby County Libraries, 1976). The Commercial and the Appeal Avalanche have merged and are still in circulation under the combined name Commercial Appeal.

  16 My understanding of the role of print capitalism was influenced by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); John D. Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press (New York: Columbia University, 1991); Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1981); and Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  17 Paul Coppock, Memphis Sketches (Memphis: Friends of Memphis and Shelby County Libraries, 1976), 130-132. Circulation figures appeared on the newspapers in the R.L. Polk & Co’s Memphis Directory (1892) and Memphis Directory, vol. 30 (1892).

  18 There would be a Lizzie whose case would be a cause célèbre that same year, but it would be in August, when Lizzie Andrew Borden was tried for the murders of her father, Andrew Jackson Borden, and stepmother, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, in Fall River, Massachusetts. She would later be acquitted. For more on her trial, see Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2009)

  19 If Freda had indeed been “almost beheaded,” it is hard to imagine she would have been able to take off running while Jo attempted to distract Alice, even momentarily, by calling her a “dirty dog.”

  20 “A Very Unnatural Crime,” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 26, 1892.

  21 “Miss Alice Mitchell’s Lunacy,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 27, 1892, 5.

  22 It is entirely possible that George Mitchell had influenced his neighbor’s narrative.

  23 “I Loved Her So!” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 26, 1892.

  24 “Made Love Like a Man, Alice Mitchell’s Unseemly Conduct with a Girl in Cincinnati,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 22, 1892, 5.

  25 Artistic emphasis is added here, and did not appear in the historic printing.

  26 The unnamed physician’s identity was revealed to be E. P. Sale, who would later testify in Alice’s lunacy inquisition.

  27 Daniel Hack Tuke, ed. A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co., 1892), vol. 1, 460.

  28 Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (New York: Basic Books, 2009).

  29 “Miss Alice Mitchell’s Lunacy, Counsel Have Confidence That Erot
omania Can Be Established, The Perverted Affection of One Girl For Another,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 4, 1892, 4.

  30 “The Case in Court,” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 29, 1892, 2.

  31 “A Most Shocking Crime,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 1892, 1.

  32 “Evidence!” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 23, 1892, 1.

  33 “Two Girls in Jail,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 27, 1892, 5.

  CHAPTER 8: MAIDEN PURITY

  34 “Miss Johnston Under Arrest” Milwaukee Sentinel, Jan. 27, 1892.

  35 “After tragedy…Did Allie Intend to Mar Miss Ward’s Beauty?” Memphis Commercial, Jan. 27, 1892, 1. “The Recent Horror,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 28, 1892, 5. “Murder’s Aftermath,” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 28, 1892, 2. “Who Is This Jessie James?” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 29, 1892.

  36 “Strange Story,” The Atchison Champion. Jan. 29, 1892.

  37 There were 5,177 arrests in Memphis in 1892. As readers will no doubt suspect, poor citizens in Memphis were arrested far more often than those of more comfortable means. Disorderly conduct, drunkenness, and vagrancy accounted for 1,887 of those arrests, and from there, the numbers for small crimes like gambling and using profane language are minimal. Memphis would later be known as the “Murder Capital of the World,” but in 1892 there were minimal arrests for violent crime. Only fifteen arrests were made for murder, but as Chapter 13 suggests, that number is clearly too low. Only 817 women were arrested in 1892, of whom 77 percent were African Americans. Memphis Board of Commissioners, “Report of the Chief of Police,” (1892), 202-5.

  38 “Bernhardt Jailed,” Memphis Public Ledger, Feb. 17, 1892, 2. “The Case in Court,” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 29, 1892, 2. “The Grand Jury Has the Case,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 30, 1892, 5. “Both Are Arraigned” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 2, 1892.

  39 “At Rest in Elmwood,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan 29, 1892.

  40 “Murder’s Aftermath,” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 28, 1892.

  41 “At Rest in Elmwood, Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 29, 1892.

  CHAPTER 9: DELICATE HANDS, HORRIBLE DEED

  42 Alice’s plea was supposed to be representative of her present mental state—not her mental state at the time of the murder. However, the murder was indication of “prior insane” conduct, as was the behavior Gantt and Wright compiled in “The Hypothetical Case,” which is discussed at length in Chapter 14. The defense would also have to prove that Alice had a physical malformation or disease of some kind and show how it enervated her mental state. Hereditary insanity would be also be established.

  43 “Both Are Arraigned,” Memphis Commercial, Feb, 2, 1892.

  44 “Will Be Disappointed, An Expectant Throng Will Gather at the Court House Today,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 17, 1892.

  45 “Letters in Demand,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 16, 1892. For more information on “femness,” see Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis’s Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993).

  46 “Two Girls in Jail,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 27, 1892.

  47 “I Loved Her So!” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 26, 1892.

  48 “Alice Mitchell’s Crime,” New York World, Jan. 31, 1892. “The Recent Horror,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 28, 1892.

  49 Isabella Mitchell’s husband, stepson, and children would testify at the lunacy inquisition. She was the only immediate family member who did not testify. Neither the defense nor the prosecution called her to the stand.

  50 “Two Girls in Jail,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 27, 1892, 5. “The Case in Court,” Memphis Public Ledger, Jan. 29, 1892, 2.

  51 “More Room for Judge DuBose,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, February 11, 1892, 4.

  52 Lynette Boney Wrenn, Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis: Elite Rule in a Gilded Age City (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 138-39.

  53 Like Alice and Freda, Judge DuBose is also buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis—in an unmarked grave.

  54 “Will Be Disappointed, An Expectant Throng Will Gather at the Court House Today,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 17, 1892, 2. For more information on racial politics and manhood, see Laura F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

  55 Case name: United States v. Stanley; United States v. Ryan; United States v. Nichols; United States v. Singleton; Robinson et ux. v. Memphis & Charleston R.R. Co. Racial discrimination in jury selection remains a major issue in America to this day.

  56 “Will Be Disappointed, An Expectant Throng Will Gather at the Court House To-Day,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 17, 1892.

  57 “The Mitchell Case,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Jan. 28, 1892, 4.

  58 Of course, Native Americans had been challenging this narrative since Christopher Columbus “discovered” America.

  CHAPTER 10: ATTENDANCE EVEN

  GREATER THAN OPENING DAY

  59 This scene has been reconstructed based on testimony, “The Hypothetical Case,” and newspaper articles in which more than three corroborated phrases or scenes.

  60 For more on women as spectators, see Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2009).

  61 The first Civil Rights Act of 1875—also known as the Enforcement Act—was intended to guarantee African Americans equal treatment, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. In the first half of the 20th Century, Jim Crow laws, increased lynching, and limited opportunities led to the Great Migration: Six million African Americans left the south for the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West—usually sticking to urban areas. For more information on this subject, see Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  62 I rely on theatrical terms, and my understanding of public spectatorship was informed by Oskar Negt and Alexander Klug, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, trans. Peter Labany, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Assenka Oksiloff (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

  63 “Second Day!” Memphis Public Ledger, Feb. 24, 1892, 1.

  64 “The Pity of It,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 26, 1892, 4. “The Criminal Court Goes On,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 27, 1892, 5.

  CHAPTER 11: QUITE A FLIRT

  65 “Miss Mitchell’s Trial,” New York Times, Feb, 22, 1892. The defense was not alone in their desire to see the letters. Though one would think that jokes about murder were inappropriate in the aftermath of a teenage girl’s slaying, there were plenty of jokes made on the pages of local papers about discovering Peters’s mangled body in the basement of the Press Club, killed by frustrated reporters.

  66 “A Crime of Passion? The Day the Doctor Shot the General,” The Nashville Tennessean Magazine, July 14, 1963, 8-9.

  67 He was born Hamilton Rice Patterson in 1861, but five years later, his name was changed to Malcom; he continued to be called “Ham.” He was admitted to the bar in 1883, and would serve as attorney general for Shelby County from 1894 to 1900. He moved on to the United States House of Representatives in his father’s former district (the tenth), from 1901 to 1906, before challenging his party’s nomination for governor in 1906. He criticized his republican opponent, Henry Clay Evans, for supporting the Lodge Bill, which sought to protect the rights of black voters. During his tenure, he banned gambling on horse racing, enacted food and drug regulations, and signed the General Education Act (which established four colleges, including the University of Memphis), but his career ended in scandal. Edward W. Carmack, who had lost the nomination to Patterson in 1908, mocked Patterson’s advisor, Colonel Duncan Cooper. Cooper and his son, Robin, ran into Carmack shortly thereafter on the street, and a shootout ensued. Robin was injured and Carmack died, but both Coopers (even though it was only Robin who engaged in the gunfight) were tried for murder. The p
ublic was enraged when Patterson pardoned his advisor; he had made 1,400 pardons during his time in office, and was accused of abusing his powers to aid his political allies. He later joined the Anti-Saloon League and supported Prohibition. By 1921, he was writing a column for the Memphis Herald Courier, and by 1923 he was appointed a judge in Shelby Court. A biographical sketch of his career can be found in the Malcom Rice Patterson Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Evidence!” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 23, 1892, 1.

  68 Flirting on trains was an unenforceable concern for the men who sought to regulate it. In 1897, Representative Prichard B. Hoot introduced a bill to regulate flirting on trains in Missouri, but it was unsuccessful. That same year, Senator James G. McCune recommended Virginia make flirting a misdemeanor.

  69 “Present Insanity,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 2, 1892, 5.

  70 “Unfolded,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 24, 1892, 1.

  71 Ibid.

  72 Ibid.

  CHAPTER 12: FAIR LILLIE

  73 “Fair Lillie,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 25, 1892, 3. “Fair Lillie,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 25, 1892, 3.

  74 Ibid.

  75 “Second Day!” Memphis Public Ledger, Feb. 24, 189, 1.

  76 “Fair Lillie,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 25, 1892, 1.

  77 Lillie Is at Home,” Memphis Appeal Avalanche, Feb. 28, 1892, 5.

  78 “She Is Out on Bail,” Memphis Commercial, Feb. 28. 1892.

  CHAPTER 13: THE OLD THREAD-BARE LIE

  79 “The Great Actress Wanted to See Miss Alice Mitchell,” the Memphis Appeal Avalanche exclaimed, but even Sarah Bernhardt could not breach the defense’s strict policy of denying access. The French actress, who was arguably the most famous of her time, had been performing in Memphis during the case. To learn of the crime, she needed only descend the theater steps, but she likely encountered news of the same-sex murder alongside reviews of her own performances in La Tosca, Fedora, or Jeanne d’Arc. She and Alice shared more than just space on those pages. In “the sensational” opera, La Tosca, Bernhard played “a love sick” Floria, a celebrated opera singer who commits murder, and then kills herself.