Wendy Gamber
Autor(a) de The Notorious Mrs. Clem: Murder and Money in the Gilded Age
About the Author
Wendy Gamber is the Robert F. Byrnes Professor in History at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of The Boarding-house in Nineteenth-Century America and The Female Econnomy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930.
Obras por Wendy Gamber
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Sexo
- female
Membros
Críticas
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Membros
- 65
- Popularidade
- #261,994
- Avaliação
- 3.3
- Críticas
- 1
- ISBN
- 10
Gamber draws heavily on contemporary news reports of court proceedings and the many editorials urging the ultimate penalty for Mrs. Clem. She had money enough to afford the best lawyers and the county ended up having to try her again and again, thanks to two hung juries and two successful appeals. Later in life, she was prosecuted again, for unrelated crimes, lending and borrowing in a clumsy sort of Ponzi scheme. Too bad she didn’t incorporate, she would have been in the clear.
The most fascinating element of Mrs. Clem’s notoriety was how much she was perceived as guilty or not guilty based on the partisan view of women’s role in the economy. The Democrats who were more rural, agricultural folk depended on women’s labor on the farm and didn’t get offended over a women trading in loans or investments. They saw women in the marketplace as legitimate. The Republicans, more urban, educated, and well off, on the other hand, saw women’s role in the home, not contributing to the economic health of the family, but raising the children and taking care of her husband. Mrs. Clem’s skill and interest in money and lending offended them.
The legal arguments of lawyers reflected these biases and so did the juries. For me, the hung jury of the first cast looms large since testimony is freshest, less rehearsed and set in stone. Over time, people become more certain, not less. However, I get a strong impression that Gamber assumes Clem was guilty. Today, we are less credulous about eyewitness testimony and courts don’t allow hearsay, so I wonder what would happen in today’s courts. Then again, they would have ballistics and DNA evidence. In many ways, the strongest evidence against Mrs. Clem was a Size 3 footprint. At first, I thought that was definitive because who is a size 3? However, that was the most common women’s size back then, so obviously, sizes were different from today.
This is a scrupulously sourced and carefully documented history of what was once a national scandal. It is different from many other crimes because the idea of a woman killing over money and fraud seems strange. This is no crime of passion.
I was interested throughout, though since there were so many trials, it’s really hard to avoid covering the same ground. Gamber wisely focused on new directions, new evidence, and new arguments, but nonetheless, it really seemed like a Bleak House criminal case.
It was most fascinating to see how the concept of women’s role in the economy played such a powerful role in how people viewed Mrs. Clem. It seemed the national divisions that led to the Civil War were still playing out on new battlefields.
I received a copy of The Notorious Mrs. Clem from the publisher.
The Notorious Mrs. Clem at Johns Hopkins University Press
Wendy Gamber faculty page
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/the-notorious-mrs-clem-by...… (mais)