In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

177 6 THE FAIR LUNATIC With the prospect of freedom, Laura Fair once again became a subject of national interest. As had been true after the first trial, newspapers across the country devoted great space to dissecting the verdict and its meaning for America. In contrast to the initial verdict, however, few agreed that the jury had acted wisely. Instead, outraged editors offered various explanations about how such a miscarriage of justice could have taken place. While they had numerous theories about how twelve men could have come to such an outlandish decision, they all agreed that a terrible outcome had been reached: a disreputable woman was now loose to debase the morals of America. In the decade following her release, Laura’s behavior, as well as wildly fictitious reports of her exploits, only seemed to confirm the widely shared view of the now- acquitted murderess: she was simply the most bold and audacious of all living women. Suing those who she felt unfairly controlled her fortune or slandered her reputation, she refused to retreat from public space. Instead, in an aborted lecture series and a privately published essay, she openly declared that she was a “true and pure woman” who had been attacked on all sides by powerful, vindictive men. Adopting a newly discovered feminist stance, she implored her “sisters” to support her in the name of maligned womanhood.1 Yet, even as she attempted to regain her wealth and reinvent her story, she found to her dismay that she had lost control of her own narrative. Throughout the 1870s, as she was pursued in the streets and threatened by “outraged” citizens, she could not escape the image of the brazen hussy whose very being endangered all that was good in society. Even with her last lecture in 1880, she discovered that her words were powerless in the face of public opinion. In the eyes of society, she remained the most villainous of women. At the very start of the second trial, however, such a portrayal may have surprised the many readers who followed Laura’s exploits in the 178 / The Fair Lunatic newspapers. As we have seen, in the period between the successful appeal and the onset of the trial in September 1872, those in the press had begun to soften their characterization of her and even started to cast a critical eye toward Alexander Crittenden. Increasingly, as they acknowledged his blame in the affair, they came to portray her as a pathetic example of wayward womanhood. As the trial wound to its conclusion, many newspapers seemed to adopt N. Greene Curtis’s portrayal of his client as little more than a dependent child, a “poor waif” whose life had been drained out of her through nearly two years of imprisonment. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, and reprinted in the New York Sun and the Atlanta Constitution, as she waited for the jury to reveal her fate, “Mrs. Fair rested her eyes on the floor. She seemed to have lost all physical power and fairly hung like a child in Judge Curtis’s arms.” Nor did she appear to revive as the verdict was announced. Rather, she seemed even more like the lifeless being he so often described. “The little black figure,” the Chronicle continued, “lay in the arms of the strong man as senseless as a corpse. . . . Judge Curtis carried his lifeless burden to a settee and laid her gently down.”2 Certainly, this description was far more in keeping with society’s vision of a weak and dependent woman than the heartless female of the first trial who had remained emotionless—and still dangerous—after impassively hearing the guilty verdict. While this new portrayal may have reflected the power of Curtis’s rhetoric and his often-credited “manliness,” it was also derived from the fact that neither the press nor the public assumed that Laura would be declared not guilty and released as a free woman. Many newspapers explained that while they did not wish her to see her hanged, they certainly did not support an outright acquitta1.3 Far better, some argued, for her to be convicted of a lesser charge and forced to spend the rest of her life prison. Failing that, a deadlocked jury might have saved her from the hangman’s noose without condoning her heinous crime. As the Chronicle informed its readers, while the jurors’ inability to reach a verdict may not have been ideal, “it would...

Share