Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (16 page)

I
N ADDITION TO
A
LICE
M
ITCHELL
,
Ida B. Wells was the only other woman in 1892 Memphis whose story was circulated around the country. Both women undermined, challenged, and disregarded white male authority in very different ways—and the reactions they garnered, and the treatment they received, had far more to do with their respective races than the transgression itself. White men threatened to kill Wells for what she wrote, whereas no one wanted to see Alice, who actually committed murder, hanged for her crime.
⁸⁶

Wells, Mitchell, and the operators of People’s Grocery lived concurrent lives in the same city, but they occupied distinct social, physical, and economic spaces within it. That separation has certainly influenced our collective memory, but their stories shaped crucial moments in twentieth century America.
⁸⁷

In the 1890s, the United States was cementing its national identity, and it was predicated upon maintaining the white home on a national level. Same-sex love and African American men and women were cogent threats to the rigid hierarchy of race and gender, and the reactions on a local level from the judge, jail, sheriff, and newspapers speak to the national construction of American modernity.
⁸⁸

B
Y THE TIME
A
LICE
M
ITCHELL’S
lunacy inquisition began on July 18, 1892, the defense was ready. Gantt and Wright had spent the months following Lillie’s habeas corpus hearing much as they had spent the days following the murder: crafting a message, finding support for it, and then skillfully releasing the information to the public.

They had allowed some access to Alice, but exclusively to the area’s most prominent medical experts—all of whom could be counted on to offer a diagnosis of insanity.

The prosecution also attempted to solicit medical experts, but they could not find anyone willing to support the position that same-sex love did
not
equal insanity. The superintendent of the Western Hospital for the Insane in nearby Bolivar, Tennessee, declined to even meet with Alice, admitting he was convinced by what he read in the papers.
⁸⁹

And therein lay the brilliance of the present insanity plea: It explained what appeared to be inexplicable, and recast a murderess as the sympathetic victim of her own illness.

If the plea failed, however, it would only be a matter of time before Alice was sentenced to death. A murder trial would have to take place first, but given her confession, a guilty verdict was all but guaranteed.

In 1892, “present insanity” was not unlike our modern day understanding of “incompetent to stand trial.” Alice’s mental state at the time of the murder was a concern, but of far less importance than her current mental state. However, in order to establish “prior insane conduct,” Alice’s lifelong mental state, from birth up to the present, was relevant. The defense’s case was laid out in “The Hypothetical Case.”
⁹⁰

Much like the initial statement circulated by the defense, which read like an interview, the Hypothetical Case was a relatively short, narrative biography of Alice Mitchell. Her life, from birth to the present day, was reduced to just twelve pages.
⁹¹
It was a preview of the defense’s legal strategy, incorporating both the testimony they would present in court, and the input of expert witnesses who would take the stand over the next ten days.

“Alice was a nervous, excitable child, and somewhat under size,” it began, proceeding to illustrate how her traits, interests, and behaviors had intensified over her lifetime. In a strategic move, the defense leaked the psychiatric vignette to the press ahead of the inquisition. It appeared in newspapers read by the public and, most importantly, by the jury. The Hypothetical case provided a roadmap that led to one obvious conclusion: Alice was a victim of her body—just as Freda had been.

“The question is, whether the defendant has mental capacity sufficient to make a rational defense to the charge in the indictment,” Judge DuBose told the jury.
⁹²

Though it was presented as a narrative, all the information contained in the document could be filed under a list of six major points integral to the plea: poor health, bizarre conduct, unfeminine behavior, masculine interests, improper attachments, and finally, the role of hereditary influence.

Alice was a nervous, excitable child, somewhat under size. As she grew she did not manifest interest in those childish amusements and toys that girls are fond of.

When only four or five years old she spent much time at a swing in the yard of the family in performing such feats upon it as skinning the cat, and hanging by an arm or leg. She was fond of climbing, and was expert at it.

She delighted in marbles and tops, in base ball and foot ball, and was a member of a children’s base ball nine. She spent much time with her brother Frank, who was next youngest, playing marbles and spinning tops. She preferred him and his sports to her sisters. He practiced with her at target shooting with a small rifle, to her great delight. She excelled this brother at tops, marbles, and feats of activity.

She was fond of horses, and from early childhood would go among the mules of her father and be around them when being fed. About six or seven years ago her father purchased a horse. She found great satisfaction in feeding and currying him. She often rode him about the lot bareback, as a boy would. She was expert in harnessing him to the buggy, in looking after the harness, and mending it when anything was amiss. To the family she seemed a regular tomboy.

She was willful and whimsical. She disliked sewing and needlework. Her mother could not get her to do such work. She undertook to teach her crocheting, but could not. She was unequal in the manifestation of her affections. To most persons, even her relatives, she seemed distant and indifferent. She was wholly without that fondness for boys that girls
usually manifest.

She had no intimates or child sweethearts among the boys, and when approaching womanhood, after she was grown, she had no beaux and took no pleasure in the society of young men. She was sometimes rude, and always indifferent to young men. She was regarded as mentally wrong by young men toward whom she had thus acted.

About the time her womanhood was established she was subject to very serious and protracted headaches. She had far more than the usual sickness at that period. She was subject to nervous spells, in which she would visibly tremble or shake. She is still at times subject to these attacks of extreme nervous excitement, but does not, now, and never did, wholly lose consciousness in them but upon one occasion.

In order to convince the jury that Alice was “presently insane,” the state also required that the defense establish “hereditary influence.” This was not a notion particular to Tennessee, as F.L. Sim, one of the doctors called in to assess Alice, explained in the
Memphis Medical Monthly
. In the nineteenth century, bodily pathology, or symptoms that began in the body and could therefore be inherited, were considered “the most common and potent of all causes of mental disturbances.”

Fortunately for Gantt and Wright, Isabella Mitchell’s history of congenital insanity was “proven beyond a doubt.”
⁹³
The Mitchell family’s physician, Dr. Thomas Griswald Comstock, offered a convincing disposition, and brought a copy of her “certificate of confinement” as evidence.

Following the birth of Isabella’s first child in 1857, George Mitchell grew concerned about his wife’s displays of melancholia.
⁹⁴
He called Dr. Com-stock, who, after a month of house calls, confirmed Uncle George’s suspicions. Isabella was diagnosed with “puerperal insanity,” a derangement or unstable state brought about by childbirth, and placed in a hospital. During her stay, she supposedly passed from melancholia to insanity to acute mania, and finally, to recovery. After two months of restraint, she was released, and eagerly returned home, excited to see her infant.

But in Isabella’s absence—and possibly as a result of it—the infant died. She was not told of the death until she arrived home, and began searching for a baby who was no longer there. When she discovered the tragedy, Isabella was understandably shocked and overcome with grief—or, according to Dr. Comstock’s testimony, “her mind became again unbalanced.” Perhaps fearing that her husband would once again have her institutionalized, Isabella managed to resume her wifely duties in just a few days, though she still displayed the signs of melancholia that had first landed her in the asylum.
⁹⁵

Isabella gave birth to seven children during her lifetime, only four of which would survive to adulthood.
⁹⁶
According to testimony, she “evinced more or less mental disturbance with each parturition, especially after the birth of Alice.” This was a salient point in a nineteenth century courtroom, where psychiatrists understood the defendant’s disease to be of the body. When Isabella had Alice, her final and most challenging pregnancy, they believed she had passed her insanity on to her daughter.

The symptoms associated with puerperal insanity were constantly shifting, but they all amounted to a condition that undermined true womanhood.
The illness was broadly defined to include, at one end of the spectrum, women who denied their baby nourishment, or seemed to pose an actual danger to them. But it also included mothers who appeared disinterested in their offspring. Women who were gloomy, or apathetic to the needs of those around them, unkempt or seemingly overwhelmed, were also diagnosed with puerperal insanity—sometimes called “insanity of pregnancy,” or “insanity of lactation.” By World War I, the designation disappeared and was replaced with “postpartum depression.”
⁹⁷

Dr. Comstock’s treatment points to a problematic relationship between the predominately male physicians and their female patients. This kind of power dynamic was a privilege that extended widely to encompass all men at the time—hence George’s influential role in both his wife and daughter’s diagnoses. As Michel Foucault points out in his book
Madness and Civilization
, the physicians who sought to define reason also silenced “unreason,” and this became a convenient way to regulate people, even whole classes of people, whom society labeled deviant.

The defense lawyers carefully crafted the Hypothetical Case in order to prepare the public for their courtroom performance, and to ensure that testimony stayed on message. They relied on family members and other witnesses who knew Alice to substantiate the claims and anecdotes during the first half of the lunacy inquisition, and for the expert witnesses to do the same during the second half.

And while Gantt and Wright did everything in their power to avoid it, Alice Mitchell would indeed take the stand.