Haber, Carole (Author)
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.
...MoreReview Horowitz, Helen (2014) Review of "The Trials of Laura Fair: Sex, Murder, and Insanity in the Victorian West". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 387-388).
Article
Dan Degerman;
(2019)
‘Am I mad?’: the Windham case and Victorian resistance to psychiatry
(/isis/citation/CBB373188237/)
Article
Mar Cuenca-Lorente;
(2017)
Poisons, Trials and Experts: Pere Mata I Fontanet (1811–1877) and Spanish Nineteenth-Century Toxicology
(/isis/citation/CBB713181362/)
Book
José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez;
(2019)
¿Entre el fiscal y el verdugo?: Mateu Orfila i Rotger (1787-1853) y la toxicología del siglo XIX
(/isis/citation/CBB107113642/)
Article
Ingrid G. Farreras;
(2019)
The professionalization of psychologists as court personnel: Consequences of the first institutional commitment law for the “feebleminded”
(/isis/citation/CBB969643572/)
Book
Timo Bolt;
Jacomien Gijzeman;
Joost Vijselaar;
(2019)
Ter observatie opgenomen. Pieter Baan Centrum 1949-2019 [Admitted for observation: Pieter Baan Center 1949-2019]
(/isis/citation/CBB526540851/)
Article
Nicholas Duvall;
(2017)
‘If experts differ, what are we to do in the matter?’ The Medico-legal Investigation of Gunshot Wounds in a 1927 Scottish Murder Trial
(/isis/citation/CBB537944644/)
Article
STEFAN WULF;
(2020)
„Schlagt das Hitlerei zu Brei.“: Politische Strafsachen, Psychopathie und verminderte Zurechnungsfähigkeit im Spiegel psychiatrischer Gutachten Albrecht Langelüddekes, 1937–1945
(/isis/citation/CBB882055559/)
Book
David W. Jones;
(2015)
Disordered Personalities and Crime: An analysis of the history of moral insanity
(/isis/citation/CBB500109603/)
Article
Marcus B. Carrier;
(2021)
The Making of Evident Expertise: Transforming Chemical Analytical Methods into Judicial Evidence
(/isis/citation/CBB614136192/)
Book
Rimby, Susan;
(2012)
Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB001420314/)
Article
Watson, Katherine D.;
(2006)
Medical and Chemical Expertise in English Trials for Criminal Poisoning, 1750--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000773961/)
Article
David W Jones;
(2017)
Moral insanity and psychological disorder: the hybrid roots of psychiatry
(/isis/citation/CBB830638113/)
Article
José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez;
(2021)
Lead Poisoning in France around 1840: Managing Proofs and Uncertainties in Laboratories, Courtrooms, and Workplaces
(/isis/citation/CBB619372597/)
Chapter
Morantz-Sanchez, Regina;
(2009)
Female Patient Agency and the 1892 Trial of Dr. Mary Dixon Jones in Late Nineteenth-Century Brooklyn
(/isis/citation/CBB001031388/)
Book
Heather Wolffram;
(2018)
Forensic Psychology in Germany: Witnessing Crime, 1880-1939
(/isis/citation/CBB886091707/)
Article
Christen, Arden G.;
Christen, Joan A.;
(2003)
The 1850 Webster/Parkman Trial: Dr. Keep's Forensic Evidence
(/isis/citation/CBB000932356/)
Thesis
Chelsea L. Berry;
(2019)
Poisoned Relations: Medicine, Sorcery, and Poison Trials in the Contested Atlantic, 1680-1850
(/isis/citation/CBB410055828/)
Article
E. Claire Cage;
(2019)
Child Sexual Abuse and Medical Expertise in Nineteenth-Century France
(/isis/citation/CBB516319186/)
Article
Peter Carpenter;
(2022)
The case of Dr Pownall – mad doctor, sane patient and insane murderer
(/isis/citation/CBB060677524/)
Article
Stuart Kirsch;
(2022)
Scientific Ghostwriting in the Amazon? The Role of Experts in the Lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador
(/isis/citation/CBB754705265/)
Be the first to comment!