The Trials of Laura Fair
Sex, Murder, and Insanity in the Victorian West
Carole Haber
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 08/2013
Pages: 328
Subject: History, Social Science
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9781469607597
DESCRIPTION
On November 3, 1870, on a San Francisco ferry, Laura Fair shot a
bullet into the heart of her married lover, A. P. Crittenden.
Throughout her two murder trials, Fair's lawyers, supported by
expert testimony from physicians, claimed that the shooting was the
result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual
cycle. The first jury disregarded such testimony, choosing instead
to focus on Fair's disreputable character. In the second trial,
however, an effective defense built on contemporary medical beliefs
and gendered stereotypes led to a verdict that shocked Americans
across the country. In this rousing history, Carole Haber probes
changing ideas about morality and immorality, masculinity and
femininity, love and marriage, health and disease, and mental
illness to show that all these concepts were reinvented in the
Victorian West.
Haber's book examines the era's most controversial issues,
including suffrage, the gendered courts, women's physiology, and
free love. This notorious story enriches our understanding of
Victorian society, opening the door to a discussion about the ways
in which reputation, especially female reputation, is shaped.